We're honored to feature an interview with Ray LaHood as part of our #InfrastructureCrisis conversation.
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If it "doesn't make sense" for the people that live along a dead end road to pick up the cost of maintaining it, what does make sense?
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American towns and states are subsidizing big businesses to the tune of billions of dollars a year. In exchange, we get crappy, big box developments and infrastructure we can't pay afford.
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In this fun and wide ranging interview, the Economics Detective and Chuck Marohn talk about the Growth Ponzi Scheme, Big Box Stores, Stroads and more.
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America has an infrastructure crisis, but it's not the one you think it is.
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This suburb is a growing place, but it's not a successful place. It risks becoming an increasingly isolating place full of people who are cut off from the economic mainstream.
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Our de facto national housing policy of drive-till-you-qualify suburban development works well enough for people with an education and a professional salary. It fails the working class entirely and that’s by design.
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The state of Florida went all-in on the suburban experiment in a way that few other places did. Overbuilt and half empty, many Florida suburbs will never climb out of debt and decline.
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The spectre of poverty haunts hundreds of American suburbs and effects millions of Americans. Let's take a look at the data behind suburban poverty: its causes, impacts and current trends.
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Ponder what life will be like following another decade or two of inversion, with society’s arrangements -- no longer able to be propped up by an expanding state. Consider an America where the affluent inhabit our core cities and the poor are left behind on our suburbanized outskirts.
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We never calculate—let alone track—the public's actual return-on-investment (dollars in versus dollars out over multiple life cycles) when we do a project. We never even ask the question.
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Most American cities experience a modest, short term illusion of wealth in exchange for enormous, long term liabilities.
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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.
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Chuck Marohn responds to critiques of his essay, Sprawl is not the Problem.
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I encourage you all to stop using the word sprawl. It doesn't accurately describe the problem, it prevents us from getting to real responses and it unnecessarily divides the national dialog in ways that are unhelpful.
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What’s one way to make it clear that your town is committed to Strong Towns principles? Put them right into your comprehensive plan.
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It ain't pretty.
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The low density auto-dependent development pattern will persist for a few more decades. So will hyper dense concentrated city centers. And then both will decline as they become overwhelmed by multiple physical, economic, and political constraints.
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Life in the exurban fallout zones of the housing crisis is precarious. Overbuilt and half empty, many suburbs will never climb out of debt and decline. Federal housing policies put them in this place.
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America's pre-Depression development pattern relied on exploitation of workers, poor living conditions and exclusion of women and minorities from power in order to function. How is the Strong Towns approach, which advocates for traditional development patterns, different?
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