Upzoned

As talks begin about how to kickstart the economy after the worst of the COVID-19 crisis, lawmakers, policy wonks, and the media are resurrecting a familiar plan: a huge infrastructure bill that will “get money flowing” and “put Americans back to work.”

The belief that infrastructure spending can cure what ails us, that infrastructure is a “good financial investment,” has gained such widespread acceptance (in both major parties, among advocacy groups, and in the media) that we here at Strong Towns call it the “Infrastructure Cult.” But we’re not buying it. Because when you do the math, you soon discover that the more-is-better dogma is financially ruinous for local communities in even the best of times.

On this week’s episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney and Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn discuss a recent article from The Hill about the $2 trillion infrastructure bill gaining steam in Washington, DC. They talk about where the money is likely to come from and how it will be spent, the problems with comparing the bill to Great Depression-era recovery plans, and why we can’t fix the economy using the same thinking that made it fragile in the first place.

Then on the Downzoned, Chuck recommends a modern adaptation of Sherlock Holmes and previews something big he’s been working on. And Abby, a Kansas City-based planner at Gould Evans, recommends a Netflix show that should be must-watch even for people who don’t live in Missouri.

Additional Show Notes:

• “Infrastructure bill gains new steam as coronavirus worsens,” by Mike Lillis and Scott Wong

• Abby Kinney (Twitter)

• Charles Marohn (Twitter)

• Gould Evans Studio for City Design

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)

• Select Strong Towns articles about the Infrastructure Cult

  • A Reminder for Planners: "Every Projection is Wrong," by Daniel Herriges

  • The Hyperloop Is Always Greener from the Other Side of the Stroad, by Charles Marohn

  • What Should My City Do About Our Infrastructure Backlog? by Charles Marohn

  • Shreveport's Highway Emperors’ New Clothes, by Kim Mitchell

  • Why Does Infrastructure Cost So Much?, by Charles Marohn

The coronavirus has upended life as we know it. Without minimizing the grief, fear, and uncertainty that has gripped the entire world all at once, the pandemic has also revealed things that were always true but were frequently obscured...or ignored.

Case in point: Bikes are an outstanding way to move around, get exercise, see your town, spend time with friends, reduce pollution, and build the economic resilience of your community. Yet we’ve built our cities in such a way that biking is not only impractical and inconvenient, but often a dangerous nightmare.

What’s happened during the coronavirus crisis is that, on many roads, the proportion of cars to people has flipped. More people are out walking and biking. Some towns and cities are even rushing to adapt existing car-centric infrastructure so pedestrians and cyclists can move around while still observing social distancing guidelines.

In a recent CityLab article, “In a Global Health Emergency, the Bicycle Shines,” Laura Laker describes how cycling rates are skyrocketing around the world, and how cities are responding.

Many experts view cycling as a safe way to avoid crowded public transportation systems — and the citizens in a number of world cities appear to agree. In New York, cycling spiked by 52% over the city’s bridges after social-distancing protocols were put in place. In Chicago, bikeshare use doubled in early March. In Dublin and London, advocates are offering support to new riders who are taking to the streets in droves.

In this week’s episode of Upzoned. Host Abby Kinney, a planner at Gould Evans in Kansas City, and Strong Towns senior editor Daniel Herriges discuss the CityLab article and what the pandemic reminds us about the benefits of cycling, in both good times and bad. What if we could shed our assumptions that streets are for cars? What opportunities do we have to improve bike infrastructure, benefiting folks now but also long into the future?

Then in the Downzone, Daniel talks about how he and his wife are using the quarantine to reconnect with an eclectic mix of friends and family. And Abby and Daniel both discuss a bizarre a documentary series on Netflix that the whole country seems to be watching. You know the one.

Additional Show Notes:

• “In a Global Health Emergency, the Bicycle Shines,” by Laura Laker

• Neighborhoods First, by Chuck Marohn

• Abby Kinney (Twitter)

• Daniel Herriges (Twitter)

• Gould Evans Studio for City Design

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)

• Recent Strong Towns articles about biking

  • The Right-Hand Rule for Passing a Bike, by Buff Brown

  • Cyclists are somehow both “vehicles” and “pedestrians.” This ambiguous status puts lives at risk. By Greg Walker

  • “Which Way to Your Car, Sir,” by Daniel Herriges

  • Hey Peloton, Here’s How Real Cycling “Changes” You, by Arian Horbovetz

  • So Your City's Getting More Bike-Friendly. How Do You Identify the Next Best Step? by Tim Wright

If you’ve followed Strong Towns for a while, you’ve likely heard us talk about Nassim Nicholas Taleb. We frequently refer to him as the Patron Saint of Strong Towns thinking, because—as we wrote last year—“his insights about risk, uncertainty, and fragility have profound implications for how we build our places.”

One of Taleb’s key concepts is antifragility. The opposite of fragility is not resilience (or robustness). Something that is resilient, when it encounters a shock or disruption, merely returns back to its original state. In contrast, something that is anti-fragile actually gains from the disruption. One example is our bones, which get stronger as we subject them to the many small impacts of walking or running.

For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, the coronavirus outbreak has a lot to teach us about just how fragile many of our social systems have become. This includes, but is certainly not limited to, our economy. A recent article in The Atlantic gets at one aspect of this. In “The Modern Supply Chain Is Snapping,” Lizzie O’Leary describes how the coronavirus is exposing “the fragility of an economy built on outsourcing and just-in-time inventory.” As she shows, we are reliant on China for many of our manufactured goods, including components for prescription drugs and medical supplies. When something disrupts that system—like the coronavirus outbreak—the effects ripple throughout the global economy and our public health efforts.

On today’s episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney, a planner at Gould Evans in Kansas City, talks about The Atlantic article with Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn. Abby and Chuck discuss some of the choices from the last 70 years that have made the economy more brittle, the work ahead to pick up the pieces, and also the choice we have to make: Will we double down on failed, fragile-making systems, or will we rebuild in a way that makes us more antifragile?

Then on the Downzoned, Chuck recommends Peak Prosperity, a daily YouTube show from Chris Martenson offering commentary and analysis on the news. (Peak Prosperity has been warning about coronavirus for more than two months.) Both Chuck and Abby also discuss the steps they’ve taken to make time for contemplation and rest in the midst of the massive changes wrought by the pandemic.

Show Notes

• “The Modern Supply Chain Is Snapping,” by Lizzie O'Leary
• Peak Prosperity (YouTube)
• Abby Kinney (Twitter)
• Gould Evans Studio for City Design
• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)
• Recent Strong Towns articles on antifragility
  • Why Decline Is Not Normal, by Charles Marohn
  • Why Massive Piles of Cash Can Be Bad for Both Companies and Cities, by Tristan Cleveland
  • Is a City More Like a Washing Machine or a Cat? (Podcast, Part 1 of 2)
  • Lots of Small Earthquakes: How a Place Becomes Antifragile (Podcast, Part 2 of 2)
  • Winning Is the Absence of Losing, by Charles Marohn

Many towns and cities have at least one: the physical reminder of some particularly egregious development mistake.

In Minneapolis, one such legacy is a Kmart—the last Kmart store in Minnesota—built in the late 1970s in a plan that went south right from the start. As Jessica Lee wrote in a recent article in the MinnPost, Kmart agreed to occupy the space only “on the condition that the city would close Nicolett Avenue so the retailer could build a massive, sprawling store.”

Since then, the Kmart, a grocery store and parking lots have spanned the 10 acres between Lake and West 29th Street. Residents and businesses for decades have protested the street layout. To this day, the closure of Nicollet has been called “the worst planning mistake in Minneapolis history,” said David Frank, the city’s director of Community Planning and Economic Development.

Now, at long last, Kmart has agreed to “terminate its lease and vacate the building.” It is the culmination of a “years-long debate over what should come of the 10-acre site that interrupts the city’s street grid system.”

On this week’s episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner with Gould Evans in Kansas City, and Strong Towns senior editor Daniel Herriges (a Minnesota native) discuss the past and future of a project that’s long been a thorn in the side of locals…and people everywhere who love cities. They look at why planners in the 1970s spent millions of dollars in public funds to essentially replace urban blight with suburban blight. They also discuss how Minneapolis can ensure that one top-down mistake isn’t replaced by another, and what city governments everywhere can do to be more supportive of bottom-up energy.

Then in the Downzoned, Abby recommends The Righteous Mind, a book by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt about why “good people are divided by politics and religion.” (The Righteous Mind happens to be on the Strong Towns essential reading list.) Then Daniel talks about how the latest season of Dr. Who has been a welcome distraction from all the distressing coronavirus news.

Show Notes

• Minneapolis’ decision to buy and demolish Minnesota’s last Kmart, explained, by Jessica Lee

• The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt

• Strong Towns Essential Reading List

• Abby Kinney (Twitter)

• Daniel Herriges (Twitter)

• Gould Evans Studio for City Design

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)

• Select Strong Towns stories about the Twin Cities

  • A Minor Miracle in St. Paul, by Christa Moseng

  • Three Cheers for Minneapolis (The 3 is for Triplex), by Daniel Herriges

  • One House at a Time on St. Paul’s East Side, by Daniel Herriges

  • Who Gets to Decide How a Neighborhood Gets Redeveloped, by Nate Hood

  • How to Make City Streets More Friendly, by Jay Walljasper

Do we really want our mayors to have a vision? This is the provocative question asked by Alain Bertaud in an article on The MIT Press Reader. Bertaud is a Senior Research Scholar at New York University’s Marron Institute of Urban Management, an urban planner, and the author of the 2018 book Order without Design.

In his article, Bertaud writes that a mayor “convinced of the necessity of having a vision” is less inclined to support innovation welling up from the population and more inclined to impose his or her own vision. 

A mayor with a vision needs to be followed, not questioned by people who lack one. Visionary leadership implies a top-down approach, in other words, but a city is mostly created from the bottom up.

Bertaud’s alternative?

Mayors and their municipal staff, including urban planners and economists, should be considered not visionaries or rulers, then, but a well-coordinated team (one hopes) of competent managers and janitors.

Bertaud’s article is the subject of this week’s Upzoned. In this episode, host Abby Kinney, an urban planner with Gould Evans in Kansas City, is joined by Strong Towns senior editor Daniel Herriges. They discuss visionary mayors, the role of city managers in creating good feedback loops, and how local governments can act as support systems for local innovation rather than gatekeepers.

Then in the Downzoned, Abby recommends a podcast that’s taking a hard look at the lucrative wellness industry. And Daniel recommends a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about North Vietnamese spy living in Los Angeles after the Fall of Saigon. 

Show Notes

• Do We Really Want Our Mayors to Have a Vision?, by Alain Bertaud

• Order without Design, by Alain Bertaud

• Dongo Chang (Twitter)

• The Dream Podcast

• The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen

• Daniel Herriges (Twitter)

• Abby Kinney (Twitter)

• Gould Evans Studio for City Design

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)

• Select Strong Towns articles on local government

  • Let's Make Public Hearings More Public, by Travis Parker

  • Learn from Peers but Think for Yourself, by Charles Marohn

  • Prototyping the City (podcast)

  • Beyond the Buzzword: Innovation and How it Can Help Local Government Create Meaningful Change (podcast)

Kansas City, Missouri recently made news by becoming the first major metropolitan area to announce plans to offer free bus service throughout the city. Coverage of this story has been mostly positive...but there have been critiques and warnings as well.

Among the latter is “There’s no such thing as a free bus.” Writing last month in The Hill, Patrick Tuohey, director of the Better Cities Project, describes previous fare-free experiments in Austin and Denver that led to “overcrowded buses, disruptive passengers, and unhappy bus operators.” There are other concerns, says Tuohey, not least of which is that the money to pay for it isn’t there yet:

The city’s next fiscal year does not begin until May 1, and the just-released budget proposal does not include enough money for fare-free buses.

Kansas City’s free transit—and Tuohey’s article—are the subjects of today’s episode of Upzoned. Host Abby Kinney, an urban planner based in Kansas City, is joined by Chuck Marohn, founder and president of Strong Towns. Together, they discuss the promise and perils of “free” transit, the kinds of conversations (especially around equity and land use) this plan is spurring locally, and why the argument that we should subsidize transit because we’re already subsidizing cars doesn’t hold water.

Then on the Downzoned, Chuck recommends The Chaos Imperative, a book about why businesses and organizations should create room for disruption, and Abby introduces the new website for Gould Evans Studio for City Design.

Additional Show Notes

• The Hill article: “There’s no such thing as a free bus,” by Patrick Tuohey

• Patrick Tuohey on Twitter

• The Chaos Imperative: How Chance and Disruption Increase Innovation, Effectiveness, and Success, by Ori Brafman and Judah Pollack

• Abby Kinney on Twitter

• Gould Evans Studio for City Design

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom (Soundcloud)

• Recent Strong Towns articles on Kansas City

  • Live in Kansas City: "We’re a suburban community learning we can be urban."

  • “We’re Overbuilt on the Public Side, and Underbuilt on the Private Side.”

  • How Better Design Can Help Solve Parking Problems, by Kevin Klinkenberg

A recent article in the New York Times called “Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build”—that’s fourteen “builds,” by the way—chronicled the drama (and a fair amount of absurdity) surrounding a proposed development in Lafayette, California.

Lafayette, a wealthy suburb east of Berkeley, is known for being notoriously anti-development. When a developer proposed to build hundreds of new homes across the street from a BART station—something the land was zoned for—it set off a firestorm of protests. Some people protested that the plans were too big, others that they were too small. At one point, the developer, Dennis O’Brien, found himself in the farcical position of being sued in support of himself.

The article by Conor Dougherty is the kind of story that brilliantly illustrates the complexities, controversies, and personalities of the housing crisis. Which also makes it the right kind of article to get the Upzoned treatment.

In this week’s episode of Upzoned, host Abby Kinney is joined by Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn and Strong Towns senior editor Daniel Herriges to unpack the Lafayette story. Together, they discuss what the situation in Lafayette says about the degree to which housing policy should be controlled at the state level vs. the local level, the dangers of one-dimensional solutions for complex problems, and whether or not it’s time to reform our laws to simply get more building done.

Then on the Downzoned, Chuck Marohn tells the story of how he met Kansas City rapper Kemet the Phantom, whose song, “Get Out (The Streetcar Song),” is the new Upzoned bumper music. That meeting was a reminder to Chuck that the movement to build strong towns goes far beyond built environment professionals: engineers, planners, and architects.

Show Notes

• The New York Times article: “Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build Build,” by Conor Dougherty,”

• Abby Kinney on Twitter

• Kemet the Phantom on Soundcloud

• Conor Dougherty on Twitter

• Recent Strong Towns articles on the housing crisis in California

  • “California Housing Crisis,” by Chuck Marohn

  • “One Important Question About California's Housing Future,” by Daniel Herriges

  • “Best of 2019: California’s Housing Crisis,” by Daniel Herriges

  • “Hey Google, Tell Me How to Make Bay Area Housing More Affordable,” by Daniel Herriges

Strong Towns board member Ian Rasmussen once likened the conventional approach to growth and development to a “bad party.”

At a good party, everyone who shows up is contributing more to the party—in food, drink, and energy—than they consume. Quite literally, the more the merrier. But what if you threw a party and everyone who shows up eats and drinks more than they brought? Each person who walks through the door only accelerates the decline. If your goal is make the party last as long as possible, you’d be foolish to let anyone else in.

The same can be said of the North American development pattern. The way we build our towns and cities—stretching ever outward, building more roads, increasing the cost of infrastructure, and increasing our reliance on cars—is a net-loss. The increased tax revenue from people moving into suburban-style neighborhoods doesn’t come close to paying for that growth over time. The result: a bad party. One in which growth paradoxically increases decline, making the whole community more fragile. If this was your town, and you realized what was happening, but weren’t willing to change the nature of the party itself—what would you do? The only thing you could do: bar entry to newcomers.

This is the situation Lake Wylie, South Carolina finds itself it in. Lake Wylie, an exurb of Charlotte, North Carolina, has tripled in size in the last two decades. As a recent Wall Street Journal article described, people were drawn to the town by its good schools and low taxes. But the party turned sour as schools filled, the water system got overwhelmed, and commute times exploded. So late last year, the local governing council slammed the door shut on growth. The party is no longer accepting newcomers...which makes you wonder how good the party really was to begin with.

Lake Wylie, South Carolina is the subject of this week’s episode of the Upzoned podcast. That’s right, Upzoned is back, with new host Abby Kinney—and a cool new theme song too, “Get Out (The Streetcar Song)” from Kansas City-based rapper Kemet the Phantom.

In this week’s episode, Abby and Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn talk about the dilemma facing Lake Wylie (and exurbs like it all around the country), the physical and cultural challenges of retrofitting an exurb for a healthier approach to growth, and the fundamentally fragile flaw in the very idea of a “bedroom community.”

Then in the Downzone, we get to know our new host a bit better. A native of St. Louis, Abby Kinney is an urban design and planning consultant at Gould Evans in Kansas City, Missouri. She facilitates the ad-hoc Kansas City chapter of the Incremental Development Alliance. When she’s not geeking out on cities, Abby is an avid urban mountain biker, audiobook and podcast junkie, amateur rock climber, and guitarist. Make sure to connect with her on Twitter at @abbykatkc.

Show Notes

• Wall Street Journal article about Lake Wylie

• The Journal. podcast episode about Lake Wylie

• “The Party Analogy,” by Charles Marohn

• Abby Kinney on Twitter

• Kemet the Phantom on Soundcloud

• New Theme Song: “Get Out (The Streetcar Song),” by Kemet the Phantom (Music video on YouTube)

This will be our last Upzoned episode for a while. This episode was recorded in Santa Ana, California, at our SoCal Regional Gathering. We talk bullet trains, big projects, and how Southern California can shift their top/down approach to start to build Strong Towns.

It’s Black Friday—and at Strong Towns, that means it’s time to hang with family, nap off yesterday’s food coma, and reflect on how dumb mandatory parking minimums are. Thousands of our readers across America are out there right now happily snapping photos of half-empty lots outside their local stores as part of our annual #BlackFridayParking campaign, reflecting on the insanity of the fact that our cities actually require many of their merchants to build so many parking spots that their customers can’t even fill on the biggest shopping day of the year. (You can totally join them, by the way.)

But not everyone thinks their town has a too-much-parking problem. And if you want to go to ground zero for people who think the Strong Towns call to end parking minimums simply doesn’t apply to their community, look no further than Southern California.

In a recent podcast from KCRW’s Greater LA, host Steve Chiotakis dug into Los Angeles’ peculiar relationship with its parking landscape. LA, after all, is a city that devotes a whopping 27 square miles of its land to the storage of private vehicles, (yes, really,) but whose residents still always seem to be endlessly circling for a spot. And while some Los Angelenos Chiotakis talks to think their city will simply never kick their autodependency habit, others see hope for getting people out of their cars and onto modes of transportation that don’t require that we pave over acres upon acres of our most valuable downtown land.

So what’s the Strong Towns take? Is Southern California beyond repair, or is it time for a transformative overhaul of the City of Sunshine?

In this episode of Upzoned, Chuck and Kea tackle that tough question—and offer a preview of what you can expect at their lived podcast recording at December 4th’s Southern California regional gathering. And their answers might surprise you—especially if you think #EndParkingMinimums means #BanTheCars.