Friday Faves - Your Weekly Strong Towns Roundup
Happy Friday! Last week we shared a couple of podcasts that Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn was featured in, and to keep up that momentum, here’s another one for you—this time from Front Porch Republic. Enjoy!
Comment of the Week:
Here’s what Strong Towns staff were up to this week:
Linda: I recently listened to an interview on the Dare to Lead podcast with James Rhee, an acclaimed entrepreneur, investor, leader, and goodwill strategist. Rhee is primarily known for having saved Ashley Stewart, a fashion company created by and for predominantly plus-size African American women, from near certain bankruptcy. In a TED Talk aired last September called “The Value of Kindness at Work,” he shared his unlikely story, and his unique philosophy combining accounting principles with a foundation of kindness.
In the interview, Rhee discusses the term “goodwill,” and how in finance goodwill is a plug used to explain any excess of the price paid for something over its actual value. He says that in the accounting world, “the only person who can create goodwill is a buyer,” but “you can’t buy goodwill in real life. You earn it through action, and it compounds very slowly over time.” Rhee continues the accounting analogy, saying that we tend to use income statement terms—like salary, revenue, and growth—to describe success, but he tends to “live [his] life and advise people to focus less on growth but more on their balance sheet.” He explains that a balance sheet’s focus is on what you already own, and that instead of just pushing for more and more growth, you should also ask yourself, “Is this sustainable?”
He goes on to ask “…how many people just spend money and then their balance sheet is bereft, they’re not saving, and then they don’t have freedom, they have no time, they become captives to the assets that they bought…and you’re constantly scrambling in your life to pay for things that you think are assets, but they’re not. They become liabilities.” That sounds like a very Strong Towns mindset to me!
(Source: Twitter / @DrTBPanova.)
Tayana: This week I visited Paris and was struck most by two things: (1) How beautiful the architecture and urban design of the city are, and (2) how polluted, noisy, and dangerous the streets can be because of all the cars. It made me question—how can we create such truly beautiful places, then fill them to the brim with noisy, dirty, smelly, dangerous metal machines? After all, there are other ways to get around. And if those other ways were better developed and more convenient, more people would take advantage of them and leave the stressful, congested world of cars behind. So why don’t we invest more in helping people make this transition? Everyone would benefit, including those who really want to keep driving, because lanes would be freer of competition for them and they’d face less traffic. What’s more, the air would be cleaner, the city would be quieter, and instead of sounds of engines, we’d hear people laughing, glasses clinking, birds chirping, children playing. Our senses would be able to focus on the beauty and people around us rather than on struggling to breathe clean air, straining to hear, or trying not to get hit.
(Source: Twitter / @BillysDonuts.)
Shina: This week, my brother shared a story with me from the Houston area (where we grew up): When no one came to a mom-and-pop donut shop's grand opening, the owner's son took to Twitter to try to drum up business. "My dad is sad cause no one is coming to his new donut shop," he wrote, with a crying emoji. Attached to the post are photos of the sunflower-yellow donut shop, with the dad in question standing alone behind the counter. Another picture shows the front of the store, adorned with a "Grand Opening'' sign, but no cars in the parking lot. There is something heartbreaking in these photos, especially when you consider that the store could have attracted plenty of patrons in a more walkable setting, where passersby would have easily seen its bright interior and sign out front. But in car-dependent Houston, I can just imagine people whizzing right by this place without giving it a second thought. Thankfully, this particular story has a happy ending, as the son's tweet ended up going viral and Billy's Donuts now has nearly 1,500 reviews and five stars on Google. Still, this is a bittersweet tale when you consider how many other great shops like this one never got their time in the spotlight, in large part because our built environment makes it so hard for local businesses to succeed.
(Source: Atlantic.)
John: I confess to being fascinated by Elon Musk. Chuck once compared him to P.T. Barnum, “more flim-flam man than visionary leader,” and that sounds about right. He’s one of the greatest showmen of our time. Barnum was known as the Prince of Humbugs. A recent article in The Atlantic calls Musk the “Baloney King.” He’s a bullsh——er, the article says, but he’s a bullsh——er who delivers. Musk is tired of sitting in traffic trying to drive through a city, so he creates a company that will build roads underneath them. The names of his Tesla car models spell out the word S3XY. (The cars also made fart noises until that feature was recalled by the “fun police.”) He makes rockets and builds flamethrowers. He’s a teenager with a couple hundred billion dollars in his pocket. And we can’t look away. As a Gen X-er, I’ve been waiting for decades for my jetpack and my hoverboard; Elon Musk strikes me as the one person who might be able to deliver.
Even so, I have concerns. The Baloney King has repeatedly dismissed the concept of induced demand, the phenomenon (well-documented) that adding more traffic lanes soon makes congestion worse rather than better. Most recently, Musk called induced demand “the single dumbest notion I’ve ever heard.” Of course, Musk has a vested interest in building more roads—with his Boring Company—and then filling them with cars (his Teslas). I’d tell Musk to stay in his lane, but both figuratively and literally, he keeps making more of them.
(Source: Flickr / haymarketrebel.)
Rachel: This essay from Tablet offers a fresh take on the problems and roots of political and ideological polarization in the U.S. today: The Certainty Trap. Ilana Redstone, professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign writes, “Certainty often leads to a tendency to be dismissive or disdainful of ideas, positions, or even questions that one doesn’t agree with—particularly when those ideas, positions, or questions touch beliefs we hold dear. The most difficult problems set in when we hold them so closely that we cease to realize they’re personal beliefs at all.” Read the whole thing with an open mind.
Seairra: I took a train up to Chicago for a weekend trip a few weeks ago and in the Strong Towns spirit, I did a lot of walking. 31 miles, to be exact. And yeah, if you’re wondering, my feet did fall off by Sunday evening. I like to travel up to Chicago pretty frequently for short trips like this, and I always walk away with something interesting. Currently, I live in a small town where it's impossible to get around efficiently without a car and people still argue about front yard gardens. Don't get me wrong, I really do love my tiny town and there's a lot of great things about it. But like anywhere, there's always room to grow. So you can imagine my excitement when I came across this street (shown above) close to Chinatown sporting the beginnings of what looks to be front yard (or, I suppose, sidewalk) gardens. Personal gardens are so simple but so effective in building a strong community: They can provide food, charm, social interaction, and so much more.
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Finally, from all of us, a warm welcome to the newest members of the Strong Towns movement: Joe Bufkin, Richard Greene, Daniel Hardesty, Annie Jenkins, Katie Kelly, Kehlan Krumme, John Manson, Rebecca Matsco, Maurice Amado Foundation, Katrina Morris, and Philip Viverito.
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What stories got you thinking this week? Please share them in the comments!