Thoughts on the Urban Environment

The guys over at Strong Towns got a major shout-out from the Atlantic Monthly today in an article by Kaid Banfield titled “How Suburban Sprawl Works Like a Ponzi Scheme.” This comes at the release of their Curbside Chat Companion Booklet [which can be downloaded here].

Here’s an excerpt from The Atlantic:

In particular, in the report and an accompanying press release, Strong Towns calls on local officials to change course and shed the “dead ideas” of the suburban era, including these:

• That local governments can grow without considering the public’s return on investment. Being blind to the financial productivity of our places has led to inefficient use of public infrastructure investments and allowed local governments to assume overwhelming, long-term financial obligations for maintaining infrastructure.
• That local budget problems can be solved by creating more growth. More growth in the same unproductive pattern will only increase our economic problems. What is needed is an approach that improves our use of existing infrastructure investments.
• That attracting a large employer is the key to local economic prosperity. In an age of globalization, this strategy may provide short-term gains for some local governments, but it is ultimately a race to the financial bottom.
• That property owners can develop their property as they see fit while at the same time obligating the public to maintain the new infrastructure. This type of indirect subsidy creates enormous long-term financial obligations for taxpayers, increasing local taxes and reducing local competitiveness.

The authors then recommend a number of specific strategies:

• A stop to infrastructure projects that expand a community’s long-term maintenance obligations.
• A full accounting of all short and long-term financial obligations local governments have assumed for maintaining infrastructure.
• The adoption of strategies to improve the public’s return on investment and improve the use of existing infrastructure.
• Large-scale changes in local zoning regulations to streamline approval processes and provide the necessary regulatory flexibility within existing neighborhoods.
• Significant changes in the standard engineering approach to road and street design, shifting emphasis away from increasing automobile-oriented mobility and toward increasing pedestrian mobility within neighborhoods while eliminating accesses and intersections along auto corridors.