The 5 Best Strong Towns Articles and Podcasts from 2021: John's Picks
We’re wrapping up the year by inviting some of the Strong Towns staff to recommend their favorite articles and podcasts of 2021. Rachel Quednau wrote about hers yesterday. Stay tuned tomorrow and the next day for offerings from Shina Shayesteh and Daniel Herriges.
1. “Multigenerational Living Isn't Immigrant Culture, It's Human Culture,” by Shina Shayesteh
As my colleagues and I were talking about—and sometimes vying for—the favorite articles and podcasts we wanted to highlight in this series, this article from Shina Shayesteh kept coming up. One of the consequences of the Suburban Experiment has been generational segregation. Consider for example how an auto-oriented development pattern favors those who can and want to drive. The young, and sometimes the old, are left out. Walking, biking, or rolling next to speeding cars, often without the benefit of a good sidewalk, is a dangerous affair. And even that assumes you have someplace—a relative’s or friend’s house, a business, a local library—within accessible distance to get to.
Shina, Strong Towns’ copy editor and designer, wrote a powerful piece about the benefits of multigenerational living and the consequences of isolation. At one point in grad school, Shina lived with five generations of her family (nine people total) in one house. But as she says, you don’t have to live with eight relatives to experience the power of multigenerational living: “My hope is that by thickening up our cities and making meaningful changes to zoning codes, we can ease many peoples’ financial struggles and our epidemic of loneliness. You don’t have to stuff nine people into one house to save money; it could instead be as simple as letting people build ADUs on their properties, or allowing homeowners to create units out of their homes to rent to tenants.”
2. The Strong Towns Series, by Not Just Bikes
Okay, so technically we ran our first video from Not Just Bikes back in November 2020. But in 2021 we’ve shared six or seven others, and those videos have consistently been among my favorite content. If you haven’t heard, Not Just Bikes is a popular YouTube channel (460,000 subscribers and climbing) based out of Amsterdam. The channel talks about what makes the urban experience in the Netherlands so great, especially when compared to the U.S. and Canada. (Hint: It’s not just the bikes.) Not Just Bikes has a fantastic ongoing series that explores key Strong Towns ideas. I’ve embedded the first video in that series above, and provided links to the rest of the series below. I also recommend listening to the podcast interview Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn did with Jason Slaughter, the creator behind Not Just Bikes.
3. “What the House-Hunting Process Taught Me about the Suburban Experiment,” by Rachel Quednau
My colleague Rachel Quednau moved early this year from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. If cities knew Rachel like I do, there would have been a bidding war for the chance to have her as a neighbor, something akin to the Amazon HQ2 to-do a few years ago. Suffice it to say, Cambridge’s loss is Milwaukee’s gain.
Rachel wrote an excellent article about how her long-distance house-hunting process put into sharp relief two very different development patterns: The traditional development pattern developed over centuries of trial and error, and the suburban development pattern that has come to dominate North American cities over just the last 80 years. One is resilient and financially productive. The other is destined for decline and can’t actually pay for itself. Rachel wrote: “I want to live in a place that’s stood the test of time, and is set up to keep doing that—one that’s been adapting and updating slowly over the decades. Those neighborhoods have gone through good times and bad ones, and their design—modest lots and homes within walking distance of life’s necessities—is still working today.”
Part of the City Center project in Mauldin, South Carolina. (Source: Upstate Business Journal.)
4. “Wasting Time, Wasting Money,” by Charles Marohn
In 2022, the Mauldin City Center is set to open in Mauldin, South Carolina. As described by the Upstate Business Journal, the City Center is a 6.5-acre adaptive reuse project that will feature “a food hall, residential townhomes and a 25,000-square-foot indoor and outdoor entertainment complex.” It has an outdoor stage, a 5,000-square-foot patio, fire pits, pickleball and bocce ball spaces, and more. Oh, and a 100-space parking lot. The mayor and developer are excited about the City Center. Understandably so...because the project has been in the works for—count ‘em—12 years.
Twelve years is a long time. I hope it works out.
As Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn wrote back in February, when cities are evaluating priorities and projects, they must account for their effort not only in dollars but in terms of time. The City Center represents 12 years of land sitting idle. Twelve years of lost innovation, lost opportunity, lost tax revenue, lost energy. And while we may be picking on Mauldin right now, this same slow, increasingly risky process is being played out in towns and cities everywhere. “This is the tyranny we have created for ourselves with the Suburban Experiment,” Chuck wrote, “the process we use to develop our places all at once, in large blocks, to a finished state. When we at Strong Towns talk about the need to work incrementally, we are pushing back against big projects—yes—but we are also fighting against the waste of human capital and ingenuity that goes along with idling in place.”
5. “12 Ideas That Embody How Strong Towns Advocates Think,” by Daniel Herriges
A few weeks ago, Strong Towns Senior Editor Daniel Herriges wrote a brilliant article called “12 Ideas That Embody How Strong Towns Advocates Think.” Daniel says something that sets Strong Towns apart from our peer organizations—and Strong Towns advocates apart from kindred spirit advocates—is that we focus not just on what to think about cities and towns, but how to think about them. There’s nothing wrong with concerning oneself primarily with concrete outcomes and policies, Daniel wrote. “[It’s] just that we’re out here trying to also change the underlying mindset that guides civic leaders and community builders.”
Daniel summarizes 12 touchstone concepts that underlie the Strong Towns view, and then provides links where folks can go deeper. Here are a few (to whet your appetite):
Antifragility
Complex vs. Complicated
Chaotic but Smart
Incrementalism
The Lindy Principle
The Overton Window
Every year, Strong Towns takes a two-week break from publishing at the end of December. If you’re looking for some Strong Towns content to tide you over, consider exploring one or more of the concepts in Daniel’s piece!
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Those are my favorite things we published in 2021! Let us know your favorites in the comments and check back tomorrow to hear from Shina about her top content from the year.
If there's a single document that reflects the spirit of our work and the essence of the Strong Towns movement, it's the "Don't Be a Jerk" Agreement that we ask all Local Conversation leaders to sign. As the movement continues to grow — and as Election Day draws near — we want to make this agreement public.