Dallas, a budget soap opera

Dallas is not financially productive. There is too much area to service and maintain and not enough wealth to do it. There's too much stuff and not enough place.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnJune 15, 2016growth, texas, california

A promise impossible to keep

What is going on in the doughnut of despair surrounding downtown Detroit is not a policy choice. It is a consequence of policy choice. There is no bringing back the illusion of wealth or, to paraphrase Tomas Sedlacek, Detroit can not get back its unsustainability.

MarohnCharles MarohnJune 13, 2016nassim taleb, antifragility, michigan

Where are the pioneers?

So many of our cities are waiting to be re-inhabited, to be improved back to their former glory. Is America capable of producing a new round of pioneers?

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnJune 6, 2016

We are All Detroit

What the final ailment for Detroit was simply doesn't matter to me. The auto-centric style of development undermined the resiliency of the city, tearing down social, political and financial strength that had made Detroit one of the world's greatest cities. Once Detroit became a fragile city, it was only a matter of time.

MarohnCharles MarohnJune 6, 2016suburban experiment, race, auto-oriented, michigan

Mithridatizing City Budgets

Can we help cities become antifragile by changing the way they receive aid from the state?

MarohnCharles MarohnMay 31, 2016local government, debt, taxes, nassim taleb, antifragility

Pleading for mercy at 65 mph

My church, like most others, has not only accepted the environment Americans live in but has joined in the program to turn neighborhoods into parking lots.

Top Story, MarohnCharles MarohnMay 26, 2016churches

Engineers Should Not Design Streets

Engineers are great at building roads, but we should never ask them to build our streets.

MarohnCharles MarohnMay 23, 2016roads, traffic engineering, engineers, streets

Strong Towns 101: Productive Building Types

Different approaches to building produce very different financial results that can be easily measured and contrasted.

Top Story, MarohnCharles MarohnMay 17, 2016productive place, minnesota, strong towns 101

Strong Towns 101: Walmart or Smallmart?

A basic look at financial productivity applied to the Iron Range community of Grand Rapids.

Strong Towns on the Iron Range

This week Strong Towns will be focusing -- here in our media stream as well as on the ground -- on Minnesota's Iron Range communities.

MarohnCharles MarohnMay 16, 2016economics, megaproject

Sprawl, Smart Growth and Strong Towns

In a solo podcast, Chuck talks about the articles he wrote on Smart Growth and sprawl (first and second) and why he doesn't use either term in describing himself or the Strong Towns movement.

Podcast, Marohn, Top StoryStrong TownsMay 12, 2016Smart Growth, sprawl

Small Airport Madness

The silly saga of getting water to my local airport is a case study in the failure of orderly but dumb project development.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnMay 9, 2016Fire Departments, water, growth, minnesota

Organized Complexity

Jane Jacobs was actually more about how to think than what to do.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnMay 5, 2016jane jacobs, nassim taleb, complex systems

Import Replacement

Many people associate Jacobs with a love of walkable neighborhoods, urban parks and historic buildings. What they fail to grasp is that these are means to an end, not the end itself.

End the Fed?

Jane Jacobs was a courageous intellectual wanderer who truly knew no limits.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnMay 3, 2016federal government, Federal Reserve, jane jacobs

Jane Jacobs Week

Jane Jacobs repeatedly challenges us to embrace the complex -- the ballet -- and not just that which is simple and easy to code.

MarohnCharles MarohnMay 2, 2016mixed use, jane jacobs

What are you doing, Maine?

Maine's response to a serious road maintenance funding emergency is to cling to AASHTO’s archaic code book while projecting a value system of improve, Improve, IMPROVE, even going so far as to assume massive traffic increases where there is little traffic today.

Top Story, MarohnCharles MarohnApril 27, 2016Maine, highway spending, local government, engineers, traffic engineering

Deck Chairs on the Titanic

Proposed changes to federal rules on congestion mitigation reaffirm that real responses to the complex problems we face will only come from our cities, towns and neighborhoods.