Strong Towns Message Shared in Columbus, GA
A recent event in Columbus, GA not only successfully shared the Strong Towns message with the community; it also received a glowing and spot-on write-up in the local paper, The Ledger-Enquirer. From the article:
Charles Marohn, president of Strong Towns, a nonprofit organization working to strengthen financial resilience in American towns and cities, brought that message to Columbus as keynote speaker at three local events.
“The key to building strong cities is incremental growth based on a low-risk, high-return strategy.”
He said the key to building strong cities is incremental growth based on a low-risk, high-return strategy that was common in the United States and across the world before World War II.
But American cities strayed from that model after the war and began abandoning older neighborhoods for newer ones, Marohn said. The cost for sustaining the new development projects has cost more than the taxes they produce, and many cities are now struggling to survive.
Marohn said many communities have found that improving blighted neighborhoods yields a better return on investment, and he used projects in his hometown of Brainerd, Minn., and other cities as examples.
“When we look at our cities today, we see that we have been so obsessed with getting that dollar for that grand huge project that we’ve just overlooked the pennies, the nickels, and the dimes that are just waiting to be picked up in our core neighborhoods,” he said. “I went all over your core downtown neighborhoods today and they’re just dripping with these opportunities.”
We appreciate the Ledger-Enquirer's accurate and concise summary of the Strong Towns message, and we're glad it was well-received in Columbus.
Interested in bringing the Strong Towns message to your community? Visit this page to get started.
(Top photo by Steve Shupe)
