Charles Marohn on Strong Towns, Urban Development, and the Future of American Cities

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4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2014

⏱️ 65 minutes

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Summary

Charles Marohn, President of Strong Towns, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts urban development and what makes a strong town. The two discuss how the post-World War II approach to town and city planning has led to debt problems and wasteful infrastructure investments, and how changes as small as the width of roads make cities more vibrant. Other topics discussed include central Detroit today as a model of city growth, the incentive problems associated with how state and federal infrastructure funds are distributed, and Marohn's efforts to change civil engineers' perspective on growth.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host, Russ Roberts,
0:07.8	of Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org, or you can subscribe,
0:14.4	comment on this podcast, and find links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:19.6	We'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done going
0:23.3	back to 2006. Our email address is mailadycontalk.org. We'd love to hear from you.
0:31.8	Today is April 28, 2014, and my guest is Charles Morone, president of Strong Towns,
0:38.9	a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to help America's towns achieve financial strength
0:45.2	and resiliency. Chuck, welcome to Econ Talk. Thanks so much, Russ. It's great to be here. What's a strong
0:51.3	town? That's a really good question. I think at the end of the day, a strong town is one that
0:57.6	compates bills and is not reliant on others for its own future. You know, so many cities around
1:05.7	the country today are completely dependent on aid from other places, from revenues from outside
1:12.6	the city in order just to make ends meet. And a strong town is one that is completely in control of
1:20.2	its own future. How do we get there from here? How do we get, how do we get, or hear from there?
1:26.0	How do we get to a situation where so many towns are either literally bankrupt or near bankruptcy?
1:34.4	Yeah, that's a really complicated question and answer. But in kind of a cliff notes version,
1:41.6	after World War II, we began, and really before World War II, to a degree, but exploding after World
1:47.9	War II, we began this kind of new experiment in how to build cities. We turned our backs on
1:54.0	the way humans had built civilizations for thousands and thousands of years. We did this for
1:58.6	logical reasons. We had the automobile now and kind of felt that this would be the thing that
2:03.2	would bring us a great bit of prosperity. And we started building cities in different ways.
2:09.4	And in the very short term, it created a lot of growth and a lot of prosperity. But over the long
2:15.3	term, that horizontal expansion component has created an enormous number of liabilities,
	...

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