What’s Wrong with Engineering Values? (New Video Series)

Why do engineers seem to have such different priorities from you and me? Why do they design streets with the sole goal of moving cars as quickly as possible, never mind the cost or potential danger? And why, oh why, do we let them? It doesn’t have to be this way. 

Strong Towns just dropped a new video series called 30 Days of Confessions, in which founder and engineer Charles Marohn, “confesses” many of the flaws of the engineering profession and the transportation system in America, and helps us think about how we could do things differently. Here’s a sneak peak at video #1:

I’ll share one of my other favorites in the series, as well. Have you ever heard a politician or engineer justify an expensive proposed road project and say something like, “Adding these two lanes to the highway will save our community $30 million dollars over the next decade,” or “If we don’t build this new road, our city will lose $15 million dollars by 2025”? The math behind those numbers is utter nonsense, and it fails to account for the tremendous costs of building new roads. Watch this next video (#22) to find out why: 

Feel free to check out the full playlist here.

Each short film shares a key concept from our newest book, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town. Here’s what Planetizen (which named Confessions of a Recovering Engineer one of its top 10 urban planning books of 2021) had to say about it: “If you’re already outraged at the state of traffic safety in the United States, Confessions is the perfect book for informing yourself and others to make a change. If you’re not yet outraged, prepare to be.”

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