Friday Faves - Your Weekly Strong Towns Roundup
Macie, the pup
Each week, the Strong Towns team shares their favorite links—the things that made us think in new ways, delve deeper into the Strong Towns mission, or even just smile.
This week, we were all catching up after our recent member drive (if you missed it and haven’t yet joined as a member, you can still become part of this movement today.) We also celebrated Memorial Day in our respective places, but without the fanfare that usually accompanies it as so many of us are still under stay-at-home orders. One bright spot was that our colleague Missy, adopted a new puppy, so we all enjoyed seeing some cute photos of little Macie over the last couple days.
What doesn’t show up in the links below are the internal conversations we’ve been having as a staff about the killing of George Floyd and how the Strong Towns approach connects to the work of racial justice. This tragedy hits especially close to home for us, as our organization was started in Minnesota and several of our staff hail from there. We’re grieving Floyd’s death and long for the day when everyone has the chance to live in a stronger, safer, and more prosperous place.
Here’s what Strong Towns staff were reading this week:
Daniel: James Howard Kunstler’s worldview and rhetorical style can be polarizing, but he is one heck of a vivid writer, and this latest piece in The American Conservative, titled “A Kid at Large in the Center of the Universe,” is delightful. I’m always surprised how quickly even dyed-in-the-wool urbanists are willing to cede without a fight the topic of children in big cities, as though it were somehow self-evident that Manhattan or San Francisco is no place to be (or raise) a child. Kunstler makes a compelling case that it is a remarkable classroom for a kid to develop curiosity and resourcefulness and learn to navigate the adult world. Or at least that it was—another theme of the piece is that Manhattan was perhaps more accessible decades ago when it was, as Kunstler puts it, “still—incredibly perhaps—a middle-class city.”
John: This is a heartbreaking (but important) read about how the COVID-19 crisis compels us to take a hard look at the state of our country’s nursing homes. The author, a bioethicist, writes:
“Part of the price we pay for living in a death-denying, consumerist, throwaway culture is that we must push these kinds of grim realities to unseen places that afford us plausible deniability. The pandemic forces us to look.”
It brought to mind Wendell Berry's short story, "Fidelity." In that story, Danny Branch breaks his dying father, Burley Coulter, out of the hospital so Burley can die with the people and in the place he loved. But for so many of the “throwaway” people in our nursing homes, no one was coming.
Lauren: This link will take you to a fascinating explanation of how “Pattern Zoning” is facilitating high-quality densification of Bryan, Texas. While it’s definitely worth a read, what tickled me about this was actually the teaser Daniel wrote for the piece when we shared it to Facebook. He clued me into the phrase “Euclidean Zoning,” wherein land uses are separated from one another, resulting in strictly shopping districts and strictly suburbs.
Since the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak, a mathematician friend of mine has been living in our household. When I used the phrase in conversation with him, he had a momentary breakdown trying to reconcile its use in a development context with what he knows about Euclid and Euclidean geometry, given his educational background. With a bit of research, we discovered that the development pattern was named for the village of Euclid, Ohio, which became involved in a legal battle against Ambler Realty Company after instituting land-use zoning in the 1920s. The Supreme Court ruled that such restrictions were constitutional. As Daniel said, the practice has been found wanting. But at least the mathematician has answers now.
Chuck: Chris Arnade speaks the Strong Towns language (or we speak his), and now he’s writing regularly for American Compass so I’ve got another must read. His inaugural column is about the “rotten culture” of this country’s rich, with a specific take on Wall Street. Chris’ connection of this rotten system to the struggles on Main Street is powerful:
“Why isn’t it considered bad behavior to find a mid-sized company, load it up with debt, strip it of its valuable assets, and send jobs overseas to the country with the lowest labor cost and least environmental regulations. All to make yourself rich, while leaving an economic hole in a Michigan town, or a New York town. A hole that sucks out hope, and eventually fills with despair and drugs.”
If you want more of Arnade, check out our two previous interviews with him on the Strong Towns podcast.
Rachel: This Atlantic article is from a few weeks ago but I can’t stop thinking about it (and I shared it on the Strong Towns Community site for further discussion). It’s written by well-known economist, Emily Oster, who has done a lot of research into risks around infants and child-rearing, and encourages a data-driven approach to issues like how babies should sleep or what pregnant mothers should eat. In the case of the article I’m sharing, Oster explores how humans respond to risk and data in the context of the pandemic.
If all we’re told is to “stay home” without any guidance on how to conduct ourselves outside of the house, at some point, many of us may just give up (for some, it has already happened) and start taking risks without thinking. Oster advocates a reasonable approach that would help us think through how to do things like visit friends or go out to eat in the safest way we can while not being totally closed off from our communities.
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Finally, we’ve got a huge shout out to all our new members. Alexa says: “Thanks everyone for the awesome member drive! I'm excited to start getting to know all of you!”
Robert Ackerman, David Adam, Osama Afif, Douglas Allen, Scott Allen, Abi Almandinger, Ericka Amador, Katherine Austin, Owen Bailey, Aditya Baradwaj, Lindsey Bartolomei, Paul Borup, Jake Boxrud, Michael Brandt, Michael Branley, George Bray, Keenan Bross, Donovan Camp, Mary Canose, Daniel Carps, David Chesler, Thomas Cooke, James Coons, Luke Crawford, Kimberly Crowther Miller, Kimberly Culbertson, Susan Cunningham, Charles F. Denison IV, Evan Derickson, Cheri Donohue, Justin DuPont, Keith Edwards, Trevor Elkins (Village of Newburgh Heights), Glen Ellis, Jonathan Frame, Evan Frasz, Joshua Gallant, Carlos Gemora, RG Gibbs, Franklin Gibson, Joe Gray, Ann Gunter, Deborah Halperin, Mary-Elizabeth Harmon, Zachary Hart, Jacob Heiser, David Hittle, Todd Horner, Steve Howard, Manuela Jaramillo, David Johnson, Donna K Wood, Peter Kenney, Suzanne Kenworthy, Benjamin Kittelson, Katrina Laflin, Will Leben, Connie Litzner, Thomas Lyon, Thomas Manson, Don Matson, Kevin McAuliff, Michael McBride, Joshua McCarty, Nancy McGee, Jeff McKenna, Margaret McMahon, Dawn McNay, Melinda Mehaffy, Lucas Milne, Staci Mitchell, Brian Mork, Louis Nequette, Abra Nusser, Jody Ocker, Kyle O'Malley, Mi Orndorff, Boyd Pate, Kripa Patwardhan, Neil Piggush, Hilarie Portell, Honor Posey, Rebekah Grace Potts, James Regimbal, Christopher Reynolds, Stefano Richichi, Randy Rogers, Trish & Lee Roisum, Brian Rusche, Tiffany Russell, Jeffery Schiffman, Jamie Schild, Jason Schneider, Jane Shelton, Ryan Sieber, Cathy Snow, Don Staley, Jennifer Stark, Ryan Stewart, Roland Tanner, Christine Thomas, Jamie Throgmorton, Moses Timlin, Mark Trainer, Tony Tramel, Jared Tremblay, James Vose, Jarrett Walker, Tracy Walvatne, Lori Watts, L.J. Weslowski, Pete Westerholm, Katiemae White, Joe Wiederhold, Peter Wray, Farrah Yang, Michael Young, and Dmitrii Zavorotny