Why resilience, not growth
Monday, January 31, 2011 | Charles Marohn Do we really need growth? If you listen to anyone of prominence today, from the president on down to nearly every town council member, the answer is a resounding: YES! And they are right. The ponzi-scheme system of growth we have created demands, like all such schemes, more growth. But we need to stop and ask ourselves an important question: Why have we created a system that we know will ultimately fail? Why have we made ourselves reliant on ever-increasing rates of growth?
I want to pause here and thank Nathanial Hood for his generous contribution to Strong Towns. I understand that Nate is an enthusiastic planner currently seeking a position to further his career. From our correspondence, I can verify that he writes well (you can also read his blog to see that) and, since he is a regular reader of this blog and others, you know he has a good grasp on emerging thoughts in the planning profession. He has lived and worked abroad, so he has some good real-world experience, and he is currently living here in Minnesota. If you might be interested in hiring Nate, or know someone who could be, here is his resume and contact information. And once again, Nate, thank you for your support of the Strong Towns movement. It means a lot to us and we deeply appreciate it.
One of the frequent criticisms of Strong Towns that we hear, especially from those vested in the current system such as engineers, city planners, economic development advisors and financial advisors and especially that same group here in my own home towns of Brainerd and Baxter (you are never a prophet in your own land), goes something like this:
What makes these guys think that they know what is going to happen? What makes them so confident that they have it all figured out?
This criticism belies one of the fundamental principles of the Strong Towns movement and, in doing so, highlights the oxymoronic beliefs inherent in those that promote our current approach. If there is one thing we inherently understand here at Strong Towns it is this:
We don't know what is going to happen.
You will never find Jon, Ben or me predicting the inflation rate, the GDP growth rate, the level of unemployment, the number of new housing starts or any other myriad of statistics currently used to project the future.
Will the foreclosure rate go up? Sure looks like it will, based on the trends, but would it shock us if it did not? Nope.
The reason why the criticism is so revealing is that the current crop of professionals advising most cities in the United States are retained because it is widely believed that they are able to accurately predict the future. And they believe it themselves. They look back and take account of what has happened in the past, what their data and statistics tell them, and then confidently project out into the future.
(There are a bunch of people reading this blog right now that are saying, "Yeah Chuck, of course that is what we do. Are you suggesting there is a different way?" Hang on.)
Doing projections like this is natural for modern Americans. The environment around us is relatively stable and has been for decades. We can be excused, to a degree, for wanting to believe that the future will always represent an improved version of the past. How else can you explain our massive credit card debts?
This Pollyanna-like view is especially true for all of those zoning officials and transportation planners that were caught off guard with the last boom. They spent a decade or more in shell-shocked reaction mode. Today they are the generals feverishly making their plans and writing their codes, preparing to fight the last war. And if you ask them, they have the projections -- thanks to MS Excel -- to make the case that soon 2005 will return with a vengeance.
Consider one of my twin home towns, Baxter, MN, which last year indicated that they were going to double their population from 8,200 to over 16,000 in the next twenty years. Nobody questions the projection even though responding to it requires millions of dollars of investments to "get ahead" of the growth.
(We'll refrain today from a detailed discussion on how those making these projections seem to always be the ones lined up to benefit from seeing them come to fruition.)
Or you could consider the city of Princeton, MN, a small town just past the far exurbs of the Twin Cities metropolitan area. This city of 4,800 is finalizing a 40-year loan (subsidized by the federal government) for nearly $16 million to pay for a tripling of their wastewater treatment capacity. Such a multi-generational commitment is done relying on significant growth in the total number of users. From the article:
Lee Steinbrecher, who was on the council last March, had made the motion to triple the plant by stating that he was banking on the work of Princeton Community Development Director Jay Blake to bring in more development.
One only need to look at the city of Avon - another local example from here in Minnesota - for a place that gambled RED on the future and rolled BLACK. They leverage $6.4 million on a development called Avon Estates, banking on growth projections. That's nearly $20,000 of debt for an Avon family of four.
How many cities in the United States have built an industrial park to try and attract that big manufacturer? How many of those lots are now sold on the cheap to the local church (which was zoned out of every other district) or to a service business that could easily have, if the conditions had been different, located in a thriving downtown?
How many transportation investments have been made betting on new growth? We had a vigorous discussion about one here last fall, an overpass in the city of Staples funded by TIGER II monies. We were assured by a local professional that it means jobs and business expansion. My other twin hometown of Brainerd is currently spending nearly $7 million on a road expansion project. They are likewise projecting growth from the project even though they have one of the highest unemployment rates in Minnesota and they are so desperate that they adjourned their last council meeting to "brainstorm" strategies for kickstarting growth.
Shut off the television cameras, the microphones and broke into two groups to discuss community marketing and the possibility of not charging certain city fees for a select time in an effort to spur growth.
On fees, one group — Cumberland, Bevans, Koep — suggested giving them up with certain criteria and evaluating it after a time to see if it’s working. On marketing, the group said budgeting was a concern as marketing came with a cost; what the role of the council should be; being proactive and knowing in advance what the city should offer for incentives before a developer came before the council; focus on commercial, industrial and general business; evaluate the city’s economic development policy; and discuss the issue with legislators.
The second group — Nesheim, Parks and Mayor James Wallin — said in order to stimulate construction to provide job growth, the city should reduce building fees for three months at a rate of 75 percent for residential and 50 percent for commercial.
Seriously, this is what our mania for growth has reduced our public officials to. A delusion that another $7 million spent on expanding another local shortcut, combined with giving up a few thousand dollars on permit fees, suffices as a sound strategy for the future.
With an approach based on building resiliency instead of growth, we don't have any of these problems. Will a resilient town see a lot of growth? Perhaps, but while it won't capture every job or maximize all of the revenue potential, it will get a healthy amount and be better off afterwards. Will a resilient town see no growth? Perhaps, and if that happens it will be okay because it will have kept its debt down, kept its commitments manageable and lived within its means.
It's the tortoise, not the hare, that wins the race, remember? There used to be virtue and wisdom in that tale. Now the modern economist, planner or community development director would laugh at the turtle for not understanding their collective wisdom and the power of their projections.
The Strong Towns movement is not one based on arrogance or over-confidence in predicting a future that is complex and, ultimately, unknowable. That is the essence of the current system. In contrast, a Strong Towns approach emphasizes resilience in the face of the unknown. Our confidence, if you call it that, comes from our understanding that, at the end of the day, we really don't know what is going to happen. All we know is that, if we spend our time and efforts building places that are fundamentally strong, we'll be able to handle whatever it is that the future reveals.
Resilience, not growth. That is the first lesson of building a Strong Town.
Related Reading
- Professional Incentives (June 16, 2010)
- Growth. I love you, I need you, I want you! (June 29, 2010)
- Podcast: Nassim Taleb and the Black Swan (July 8, 2010)
- The Third Choice (July 8, 2010)
- The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nicholas Nassim Taleb
- The Age of the Unthinkable by Joshua Cooper Ramo
- Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
If you value what you read here, consider a donation to help support the Strong Towns movement. Your support -- at whatever level -- will go a long ways towards giving us the resources and credibility we need to spread this important message.
Reader Comments (7)
People who make predictions based only on past trends commit the common statistical fallacy of inferring causation from correlation., also known as The Gambler's Fallacy (one form of it anyway). The mantra of people who try to defuse bad statistics is "Correlation does NOT imply causation." If you do not understand the cause of a trend, then your prediction is worthless.
In your scenerio, people also take for granted that growth (whatever that is) is necessarily good. Even if we could sustain endless growth, why would we want to? Does it make us happier? Often it does not. Often it causes great harm, not just in the long term, but in the short term as well.
Chuck, as you know I am in agreement with your underlying philosophy. But I am concerned that your title and perhaps some of your text could be appropriated by the "no growth" or "slow growth" crowd, which basically has a "no growth HERE" point of view. The result is that, when growth does occur, it is pushed to the places of least resistance, essentially converting the rural landscape into yet more suburban sprawl. As one commenter memorably put it, "cows and corn don't come to public hearings."
Growth may or may not come to places like Brainerd and Baxter, and I get it that it can be self-defeating to chase it mindlessly. But, when one looks beyond the borders of individual communities, I trust the demographers who forecast that our nation is going to grow by half, more or less, over the next 50 years. Those homes, schools, shops, places of worship and, one hopes, jobs are going to go somewhere, whether we like it or not. And our environment, economy and social fabric depend on our being realistic about that and accommodating them in the right places in the right way.
You are absolutely right in slamming the examples of misguided growth-chasing that you proffer. But the problem with them isn't that they equate with growth. The problem is that they don't account for and anticipate growth in the right way, the resilient way. In all but a few places, some degree of growth will occur. Let's work together on getting it right.
Kaid: I have a big problem with the word "growth" because it is so vague and suggestive. I think that this problem is related to your concern in that you are interpreting the word differently from Chuck. I think that you are talking about an increase in population and facilities needed to accommodate those people. When economists talk about growth, they mean an increase in the movement of money. I believe that this movement of money is mostly associated with increased production by and profit for big industry, and does nothing to accommodate the real needs of real people.
A large part of what we're trying to do here at Strong Towns is to change the deeply ingrained mindset that equates a "better" community with growth (and conveserly the mindset that if you're not growing, you're dying). This is not just a mindset that affects communities or is limited to land use issues. It permeates our society, which is why it so hard for us to think otherwise.
Resilience has not much at all to do with growth. Resilience (in the context that we discuss) is really just about how prepared a community is to deal with an unknown future. As Chuck said, our focus is not on predicting the future, but in helping communities position themselves to thrive despite the changes that might come their way.
A Strong Town looks at each individual change to the community and assesses whether it will make them more or less resilient. Is 100 new jobs in the community better than 10 new jobs? It depends. Are 50 new single-family homes in a farm field better than 10 remodeled homes in an existing neighborhood? It depends. Would ending a subsidy and losing an employer be a bad thing? It depends.
A Strong Town uses a more complex measuring stick to determine what will make the community better than a community just seeking "growth".
Great conversation.
My two cents: To me a strategy of 'resiliency first' includes growth, but a strategy of "growth first" does not include resiliency. We are very pro-growth, but only when it adds to the overall strength of the community.
My biggest fear is that we say yes to bad development simply for the sake of growth. So long as it cash flows in the near-term, it is considered positive by most current economic development models. Our thinking and understanding needs to mature so that we don't act like NIMBY's, but also don't act like Pavlov's dog when new growth comes to town.
I think Kaid has a point here. Especially since "growth" is somewhat ambiguous.
I would be very surprised if people were sincerely unaware that projections and estimates contained error; although in my experience, many have problems effectively dealing with decision-making with rsk and uncertainty. Moreover, I doubt that people would be surprised that individuals took advantage of projections and estimates to further their personal goals. I take it that one of your points is that our decision-making for our towns should account for that uncertainty (and perhaps bias) and that making huge investments that rely heavilly on these estimates is risky and potentially destructive to our notion of a livable space/strong town.
The point that came to mind, that I believe Charles later addresses in the comments, is that "growth" really is good. By growth I'm refering to economic -- which is not about movement in money -- concept in that it let's us have more "stuff". "Stuff" in this case, is very general. For instance, we want more parks, hospitals, better schools, open space, cleaner air, and so on. Our productive ability allows us to choose more of that stuff that is part of a strong town.
Chuck, I resonate with what you are saying. I am a lay person, not "intune" as to the intricacies of city / urban planning and development. I do hail from your neck of the woods and have seen first hand the "development" of this area. However, after reading your post and responses I come away with this thought. Historically, governmental response - at any level - has been to throw money at the wall and see what sticks. If good comes out of it then the money throwers can pat themselves on the back and line their pockets as well. If the venture is unsuccessful the attitude seems to be ... cest la vie .. let the taxpayers foot the bill. I will bookmark your site and learn from you.