What Does the Future Look Like for Tiny Towns?
Co-hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn discuss the challenges faced by Victoria, Prince Edward Island, a town in Canada that only has 139 full-time residents. In an attempt to attract new residents, the town has adopted its first five-year development plan.
Chuck and Abby talk about how very small towns like Victoria show the absurdities of the Suburban Experiment best — and feel its consequences most keenly. They explore what the future could look like for communities like this and emphasize the importance of embracing the things that make a specific town special instead of trying to copy suburban subdivisions.
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Abby Newsham 0:04
This is Abby, and you are listening to up zone.
Abby Newsham 0:18
Hey everyone, thanks for listening to another episode of up zone to show where we take a big story from the news each week that touches the strong towns conversation, and we up zone it. We talk about it in depth. I'm Abby Newsham, an urban planner in Kansas City, and today, Chuck maroon is back on the show. Welcome. It's great to see you.
Chuck Marohn 0:39
It's nice to see you. I'm happy to be back.
Abby Newsham 0:43
Oh, remind me, were you traveling for your book? Was it a mixture of a lot of different things?
Chuck Marohn 0:51
Well, it's been a while. Last week, I was touring colleges with a high school senior and my wife and we were looking at, you know, all the places that she'd like to go. She is, I don't know, looking out of state and wants to be far away. And also, you know, I think if, if we're talking candidly, has earned the right to do that. I mean, she's taken really hard classes and done really well, and has got accepted at a couple places that, you know, I'm I'm very proud of her, so we're trying to help her make that dream happen. And so, yeah, I was out looking at colleges, and then the week before, I was actually at the state high school dance tournament, which, again, senior kid last year of dance, we did win first place at State. And I'll just say for one of the categories for kick Brainerd, this is a small town. We have, like, this overly aggressive dance program. And I, if you would have asked me before I had kids, like, Are your kids gonna be in dance? I would have said, no way. Like, zero chance. Like, no way. My wife was not in dance. I was, you know, I had no girls in my family, like, we would not have been in dance. And somehow the girls were like, wanted to do this, wanted to try it, got into it. And they both went all the way through this, like, really aggressive program. And by aggressive, I mean they start you like, when you're three years old. And this tiny town is in the highest category of dance. So we're competing against all the Metropolitan the Minneapolis St Paul area schools, and we have one now, two years in a row. And that's not uncommon. Brainerd is usually in like, the top three or four in the state.
Abby Newsham 2:29
That's fantastic. I don't think I realized that.
Chuck Marohn 2:33
In some ways it's fantastic, in some ways it's really hard. It's really hard because, you know, it's a brutal practice schedule. They practice a lot. Both of my kids have wound up, you know, at the end, being, in a sense, benched. You know, if you were in basketball, they would be riding the bench, just because, like, you've got to be able to put your head, your leg behind your head, and they're just built that way, yeah. But I think, you know, the good side, it's really taught them this is what it takes to be like the best. And you may want to do that in some places and other places. You may not, because it's kind of fanatical. And, you know, being around a program that requires you to get there early and work late and be really, you know, dedicated, and then, you know, both of them saw it all the way through. I was just very proud of that. I think it was a good experience overall. So I was there to celebrate her last two days in dance
Abby Newsham 3:29
well, which was, I'm sure, it was bittersweet, for sure, and it's this is kind of blowing my mind a little bit, because I feel like it was just yesterday that we were talking about your other daughter, who was a senior and going to college, and I just feel like that wasn't very long ago, and now we're talking about a totally different kid also going to college. So
Chuck Marohn 3:53
the one, the one thing that I love about dance and I want to paint a mental picture for you, so imagine, you know, you could think, like, I think there's even a show called Dance Moms, yeah, the moms. And I say this, you know, my wife is really chill and mellow and like, love her, you know, obviously, but she's not a dance mom. There are Dance Moms there that are borderline psychotic, like, it's
Abby Newsham 4:18
real, kind of crazy, yeah, Dance Moms is real, yeah?
Chuck Marohn 4:22
And as a dad, I always was like, I don't have any sons, I just have daughters. And I'm like, I'm going to show I'm going to be there, and I'm going to cheer, I'm going to try to understand dance. I'm going to try to, like, get into it. But you you look around and at the last dance. So this is our last time dancing ever as a senior, right? You look around and there's a bunch of grown men, men in their 40s and 50s with a big beard gut and, you know, kind of macho persona, maybe, or what have you. And they're in tears, you know? They're like, Oh, right. Like, they're like, You look around and I remember the. One guy was a friend of mine a few years ago. You know, we've been hanging out for years because we're a dance dads, and, you know, you just wind up with these things. You wind up talking to him. And I remember he's just like, he couldn't, couldn't control himself. He's just crying. And I, I put my hand on his shoulder, and I'm like, you know, it's, you know, I'm just, I'm here. And afterwards, he's like, Chuck was my rock. He got me through.
Unknown Speaker 5:20
Got it, yeah, yeah. Because you know you
Chuck Marohn 5:23
you are, you put all this time into, you know, helping this kid mature and get to the point where, you know, and and then it's over, like you're what, you're literally watching the end of an era. And, yeah, you know this,
Abby Newsham 5:39
wait till they get married, it'll be you'll be a wreck. I know
Chuck Marohn 5:42
I will be a wreck. So I missed you. I missed having our conversations, but I was doing that's a good reason, redeeming, redeeming family things the last two, yeah,
Abby Newsham 5:50
definitely. My last small talk question for you here, before we get to the article, is, do you guys do the dancing dads?
Chuck Marohn 6:00
So we did Yes, but me, personally, not so much. I've done it twice with the girls. I did it with each girl when they were younger, and now the oldest one has said, we're going to finish out the dance, because that was a competitive dance. Season is now done. Now is like the studio session, so non competitive dance. She said, we're gonna finish it out with doing the father daughter dance together. So I'm, I will be if you want to see Chuck Marone dance and make a fool out of himself with a with a beautiful you know, at that point, she'll be 18 year old daughter of mine, and we'll be doing that sometime in like late April, early May well, see if your wife
Abby Newsham 6:39
will take a video, and I'll do
Chuck Marohn 6:42
that. You can see it. Well, I
Abby Newsham 6:45
asked because I was in dance, not competitively, but me and my sisters all did dance growing up. And one year, my dad did the dancing dads, and he had a friend who was the Creative Director for the Blue Man Group in New York, and, oh yeah, he was, like, one of the people that started it back when it was, like, just street performing, um, but he got the paint, and he and his friends, like, dressed up, like blue man and built out this PVC pipe structure and did a whole show for that. And it was, it was actually really cool. I was pretty embarrassed at the time, but now, as an adult, I kind of appreciate what they did there. I'm
Chuck Marohn 7:26
I'm totally for that. We do have a dad group that dances, and I've never been part of that, but I'm doing the father daughter dance. That's the ones that I've done. Gotcha
Abby Newsham 7:36
Okay, okay, so two different things, yeah,
Chuck Marohn 7:40
although I will say, at one point in my life, this is gonna sound really dumb, like coming out of the blue, but at one point in my life, I did like look into being part of the blue
Abby Newsham 7:50
head group. No way. Yeah. Well,
Chuck Marohn 7:53
if you go to their website, there's actually three requirements. One, you have to be between five foot 10 six foot tall. Like, that's me. I'm five foot, 11 and three quarters. I'm six foot. You had to weigh, like, a certain, like, between a certain amount, like, you had to have a certain build and physique. And I have that, like, I'm exactly what,
Abby Newsham 8:10
yeah, you would. You could make a blue man,
Chuck Marohn 8:13
yep. The second thing is, you have to be rhythmic. And I'm, yeah, like, I had a scholarship to play music, like I can, I am obsessively rhythmic, and so I'm like, and I love the blue man music, like, I love their there's a lot of their music that I really liked. And then the third was, you have to be very expressive with your face. And my wife is like, No, you're not. You can't do that. I'm like, why? Maybe I can work on that one. But that's all the further it went. Was me like saying, I wonder if I could do this.
Abby Newsham 8:44
Well, maybe when you retire, you can, although I think I saw something that they're retiring, the Blue Man Group or something is ending.
Chuck Marohn 8:52
Well, it's also, I am old now, so I'm, you know, like, I, yeah, there is there's that, you know, these guys are young, and I do think if there wasn't an age component, there certainly would be, like a physical stamina component that I probably would have aged out of by now. So
Abby Newsham 9:10
gotcha, yeah. Well, you can dream. We
Chuck Marohn 9:13
can always dream, maybe, like a geriatric Blue Man Group. That's what I'll Aspire
Abby Newsham 9:18
that's not the worst idea. Maybe the former creative director will hear this and they'll start a geriatric
Chuck Marohn 9:27
now we're nine minutes into this, and we haven't talked about now I'm sorry
Abby Newsham 9:31
to the people that hate when we do that. Okay, we are going to talk about this article published in CBS News by Sarah Frazier, the title is population growth called critical for the sustainability of Victoria PEI. So Victoria is this very charming seaside village in Prince Edward Island, and it is at a bit of a crossroad. It's it's a very popular summer destination, but only has 139 full time residents, and is thus struggling financially. After months of discussions that the town has had, they've adopted their first ever five year development plan, and the message and that plan is that it needs to have more people to survive. This, historically, was a thriving shipbuilding hub, and has more recently been reliant on tourism, aquaculture, and has had some housing development, but mostly stalled growth. Nearly a third of its building lots are empty, making it tough to maintain services like water and sewer and to turn things around. The plan really focuses on attracting new residents by diversifying housing, encouraging development and adding amenities like daycare and senior housing, things that long term residents would need in a full service community. So it's very ambitious, especially with this being such a small town. But I felt like this is a textbook strong towns article and challenge that this that this little community is facing.
Chuck Marohn 11:22
Wow, I have some I have so much to say, and I feel like this just really struck a chord with me. So let's, let's paint the picture for people. Because a lot of people listening to this are gonna say, Why are you talking about such a tiny little town? I mean, there's like 150 people. This is a tiny, tiny town. Why are you talking about such a small place and and I feel like the answer to that is you, when you get to the kind of edge conditions of the development pattern, what happens is that you can see the absurdity more clearly, like you can see the extremes more clearly. This was, I felt like the greatest gift that was given to me, that really, you know, helped me launch strong towns and got me this place, was that I was working in a lot of places like this, where the the whole idea and the whole concept was just absurd. And you could see it so clearly. Let me give you one of the absurdities. So if you look at this city, and I've spent some time now looking at it on Google Maps, you have, like, the old the little town, right?
Abby Newsham 12:36
I mean, it is a little town like, Yeah, four blocks surrounded by farmland,
Chuck Marohn 12:45
okay, yes. But in between the little town, the farmland is the suburban subdivision. So look to the west there. You've got dunrovan Street, and what is that? Wanda Street and Jude Street, and you've got your little suburban subdivision, and if you go there, you've got, you know, street lights, homes, ditches, basically, if you just snapshot of this and said, Where is this? This is like any suburb USA, right? I mean, I realize it's Canada, but this is any suburb Canada. This is just like the stuff we build on the edge of town, you can see the sewer and the water system and all that is in there. So you've got this, I look at their city budget. I went to their website and downloaded their budget, their entire annual budget. Take a I don't want to put you on the spot. I don't want to embarrass you, but really, like, no number is ridiculous here. What is their entire annual budget? In your mind? Like, what would that be? Roughly, a small city, 150 people,
Abby Newsham 13:49
yeah, 150 people. I'm just gonna say, like, $200,000 I don't know, 204,200 No way. Wow. I'm a financial
Chuck Marohn 13:58
genius. You're a financial genius. Okay, so I also went to their capital improvements plan. So here are things we need to spend on capital costs, right? Like things we need to spend on fixing sewers and waters and roadways and and I just, I get to one line item, wastewater projects, replace lift station. Replace lift station. That's one budget item. Now understand that a lift station, for those of you that don't know, sewage runs by gravity, generally downhill to a spot, then there's a pump in there that pumps it out to wherever it needs to go. That's called a lift station, right? All right. Replace lift station. Ready for this $435,000 now that's one part of one system, of which point the system is like multiple times this cost, right, basically, and I wanted to put this in context for you, the entire Bucha. Budget of Kansas City on an annual basis is unlike $2.4 billion in proportion. This would be like if you had a line item just randomly stuck in your Kansas City budget. That was like five replace list station $5 billion
Abby Newsham 15:16
yeah, and it's one thing of many things. One tiny
Chuck Marohn 15:22
little maintenance thing, yeah, one tiny little so this, what you see in this extreme kind of situation, is the reality of our development pattern. And I say this, small towns, the most rural areas, the suburban development pattern is just fully revealed for its economic absurdity. It is brutal, brutal on these places, when these places go down that route of chasing growth, expanding outwards, putting in the sewer, in the water system, trying to become a mini version of a big city that that offset between the assets you take you accumulate, and the liabilities you take on is so quickly revealed for its absurdity that you get this kind of thing Where I'm I'm sure that this city has multiple applications into the Providence saying, like, we need money for this thing and this thing and this thing and this thing. And I'm just going to point out, without that, without them being like a fully award of the state, this place will just go away, because the development pattern they have is not viable in any way. Well, let
Abby Newsham 16:43
me, let me flip that a little bit, because another thing I want to talk about along those lines is the threshold where even urban format development is is viable because we're talking about such a small number of people. And you know, if you zoom into this town, you've got this traditional development pattern, you know, four blocks of it, little houses and some commercial buildings, and kind of a, you know, comparatively walkable and more compact pattern, but with such a small number of people, it seems like any level of like infrastructure beyond like maybe paving roads would be, not, would be, not be viable, even within this development pattern, because it's just not enough people to create a critical mass, to have a pump station, or to have kind of the the basic elements that you would have, it's it just makes me think of like there's this, there's this scale of community where You might have an urban development pattern or an emerging urban development pattern, but really, from an infrastructure standpoint, it has to be rural in nature. Does that make sense?
Chuck Marohn 18:12
It absolutely makes sense. This isn't even enough to support paving the roads. Let's let's go back. Let's put ourselves in the mindsets of people who would have lived in a place like this 100 years ago. So before you know, Let's even say with automobiles. But really, before you know, the whole suburban post war suburban experiment, or
Abby Newsham 18:36
when people just started settling in in little towns, yeah, coming here. I mean, every little town kind of started like this, right,
Chuck Marohn 18:44
right? Every little town started like this. You would have been eking out a living in kind of the most, you know, what my grandmother would call, like, prudent way. But just like, how do we cut every cost? How do we maximize everything we do? How do we fill in every gap, every space? How do we make the best use of limited resources? It's a little you know, we've had talks here in the past about water in the desert, and I think we can get a sense of like, water is scarce in a desert, and so the idea of having lawns and golf courses and all this is absurd. I think we all recognize that. But I think we also recognize that if you went back 100 years ago, you had a cis turn for a reason, because the cistern was how you had water. And if you didn't capture the water and actually store it, you weren't going to have water, and then you were going to die in the same way a city like this, if you didn't, in a sense, live very close, where you could walk, where you had, like, limited demand on your resources in order to basically put your resources into things that were the highest returning way to do stuff, if you. Didn't do that, your town would just go away. It would just be abandoned. It would just cease to exist. And so you have a development pattern that you know. New urbanists call it traditional, like other people's like pre suburban experiment, where it was a very low at its at its infancy phase, it was a very low burn financially, in order to sustain it. But it also didn't give you, you know, fire protection, great sewage treatment. You know, you might have had a latrine out back instead of sewer. It might not have given you a good sewer treatment. If you did have sewer, you might have just run it straight into the river, right? You would have had paved roads. You would have had a bucket brigade volunteered Fire Department. You would not have had a city staff. You would have had, like, a few people who got together once a quarter and talked about things and worked it out. So there's, there's all these things that I'm not saying make for great living. Like, I'm not suggesting, like, you know, oh, we should go back to having bucket brigades instead of having, like, a legit fire response here. But I am saying that once you, as you said, once you add these things, from an infrastructure standpoint, the ante for viability goes way, way up to the point where you can't do it in a city with 150 people, and you certainly can't do it in a city 150 people, where everybody's really old and no one, everybody's moving out and nobody's moving in. Like it just like the math does not work. And so unless we want to say, you know, unless, and I'm not going to tell Canadians what they have to do, but if can, if Canadians say keeping a city like this around is really important to our heritage and who we are and supporting them, then they're going to spend hundreds of 1000s, millions of dollars a year for every one of these places, like propping them up. Or this city is going to go away, or it's going to not have the level of infrastructure investment and basically, like fiscal burn rate that they do now, those are the only three options. Yeah, and
Abby Newsham 22:13
from an engineering standpoint, this really makes me think about how we don't really have an incremental approach to engineering. I mean, you think about people who came over to this continent and started settling in little towns like this, and they probably were building houses, and the infrastructure was kind of built incrementally over time. And that's not to say that it was built well, I mean, a lot of places have combined sewage issues and, you know, I think there's a lot of reasons why we have, like, best practices for engineering, and there's a way to do things right, but there's a trade off to that right, because it means that we Don't really scale our infrastructure investment to the level of private development that allows it to be viable. And that's ultimately, I think, one of the biggest challenges with the suburban development pattern, but certainly a lot of different development patterns that we really front load the best, you know, nicest infrastructure that is built correctly in the way that infrastructure ought to be built and for it to operate properly. But we are not doing the same thing on the private development side. Then it is. It makes it not viable, essentially.
Chuck Marohn 23:41
Well, you you look at, if you look at this subdivision that they put in to the west of the city, yeah,
Abby Newsham 23:48
that's exactly what I'm looking at. Like this is, yeah,
Chuck Marohn 23:52
it, it effectively doubles the size of the city.
Abby Newsham 23:56
Yeah. Like that pavement. I want to measure that pavement compared to the rest of the city. Yeah.
Chuck Marohn 24:04
Land area wise, this doubles the area of the city with probably about a, I don't know, 5% 10% increase in population, like that. That's that's mathematically like doesn't work. But let's go to your point. We used to build this stuff from an infrastructure standpoint more incrementally. And there's a lot of people who are listening or like, how would you even do that? That's crazy. The way you would do that is you had town. You had the city, and let's call it a town, because this is really like a tiny, little city. You would have this place that people would gather and you would start to build that up. And then you would also have people who lived out on the edge. The people that lived out on the edge didn't have any services. They didn't have it's a dirt they might have had dirt road. I grew up on a farm, like three miles outside of town. We had two tire tracks through the woods like to get to. Our place, you know, like there was that, that was it, and that would be what you have. And so if it snowed, you might be snowed in for four or five days. If you call the fire department, if you call the police department, they might show up in an hour. I mean, that's what you get when you live way, way out on the edge. And also, you know, I lived on a farm. We farmed. None of these people out here on the edge today are farming. I mean, these are, you know, subdivisions meant to get suburban homes. And I think ideally for them, you know, younger families that would help them repopulate their place in in a in a real world, these would have been smaller places on the edge, and as the city incrementally grew out, you would gain that critical mass to then start extending infrastructure, start building real roads, start putting in real sewer and water systems, start building it out. But it was, it was a thing where the public, the private investment came first, and the private investment got to a point of being substantial enough where it could support the public investment, the way we do it today, and the way you see it, kind of most bizarrely in this small place, is that we do the public investment first and then hope the private investment fills in. I've been all over your town, you know, out on the outskirts of your town, where you have miles and miles and miles of infrastructure in the ground with nothing connecting to it. Because Kansas City has a build it, and they will come attitude, as do most you know, American cities, I'm not trying to pretend holier than now with this place, they have a build it, and they will come attitude to the same attitude that Brainerd has, the same attitude that Kansas City has, the same attitude that all of our city has. The only thing is, you can see how bizarre it is when you look at it here, where it's, yeah,
Abby Newsham 26:53
because it is so stark. Yeah, it's so stark. And it's, it's unfortunate that, I mean, they have, they have these four blocks of, like, lovely. You go to Street View, and it's, it's, actually, I mean, it's a really nice looking, charming town. And it's, it's a, it's four compact blocks. And I just want to copy and paste that right next to it, and make that the approach to growing the city, rather than, I mean, it's too late to do that on in the area that they've already started developing, but it's unfortunate that they they've completely changed the development pattern with With this extension to the point that you really it's not a cohesive town, and the growth that they have here is not part of the original the original town. Well,
Chuck Marohn 27:52
not only that, but I'm guessing, if you went here, they would say they have parking problems and everything else, which is, again, an insanity. I don't want to take and copy and paste this place. I mean, I get what you're saying, and I think ideally like that you would get that. I look at this place as being in like a toddler phase of its development, and I want to mature what is actually here in place up to like an adolescent phase of development. So let, yeah, single family homes. And, yeah, let's add some cottages in. Let's add some, some corner commercial places. Let's, you know, Let's thicken up this neighborhood and make it like a, you know, the the next best version of itself.
Abby Newsham 28:37
Yeah, I guess for me, it's just, it's, if you're going to build any new streets and expand it, it's it's unfortunate that they didn't just expand the existing block structure. I mean, they're just squares, and that would have been a pretty straightforward way of of expanding the town without creating a disconnected network, because once you create a disconnected street network, it's really hard to fix that and make it connected again. And all of the lots that have been plotted along that suburban development pattern are huge compared to the rest of the town, and it really feels like two different places completely.
Chuck Marohn 29:21
Let me defend small towns for a second. Because to you and me, this seems absurd, and I totally agree with you, why would you not just extend the grid? Why would you do the thing that you did? Let me, let me defend or let me give some insight into how these smallest of places work. We do not have development codes for small towns. We have, in the most part, development codes for suburban expansion. That's what all of our zoning codes are for. That's why we have fights over lot size requirements. And can you build a duplex in a single family thing? And you know, do we have to have Part. Minimums because our codes are our zoning codes are designed to create suburbia over and over and over and over, our most thoughtful and sophisticated cities have gotten rid of those codes and replaced those with form based codes and other you know, I think more thoughtful arrangements, but those are generally like larger cities, larger metropolitan areas. They're not these small towns. If you are a small town, you don't have a city planner, you don't have a town architect, you've got a staff person that you pay to put your budget together and sign checks and do that kind of stuff. You hope they don't steal from you, because you have to invest a lot of faith in them. You ask them to review building permits on the side, right? Like that's just part of their job. So they are, like the literal jack of all trades, but generally are someone who's like local, who's not been trained in any of these things. And then you say, All right, we need to grow. Because, you know, things are not going I mean, we have a four and $35,000 lift pump we need to put in, and our total budgets 200,000 we need to actually grow. So how are you going to do that? And the thing you do is you take off the shelf the thing that the next city is doing, and you copy that, and you institute that well,
Abby Newsham 31:23
or, or they're at the behest of kind of the sophistication or philosophy to development of the developers that are willing to come in and do something, and they don't get to choose who, you know That's that somebody's going to come in and do, like, a really thoughtful, bring in a thoughtful town building approach to developing in the city, you're much more likely, like many towns, like Kansas City, like, like a lot of places, to get a much more conventionally minded developer who's going to come in and do the suburban development pattern that will sell a product, right?
Chuck Marohn 32:09
And when you do, it will be 1% of your city, not expansion of your city, right? Yeah. And so that that's why I say when we look at these smallest of towns, what we see is the absurdity of this development pattern, like writ large, like it, it slaps you in the face, and you're like, Oh my gosh. Why would let me say this in like a mean way, and I don't mean it in a mean way, but let me personify the person who would be critical here. Why would these Podunk idiots from the middle of nowhere, grab a zoning code from a different place, get a developer from a suburban place, bring them in, have an engineer tell them to run water and sewer out here, build this stuff in this way when they're already broke. And the answer is there's nobody giving them another plan. There's nobody with a different plan, like, there's nobody with a different approach. And, you know, we can say the same thing about Kansas City, and we can say the same thing about Brainerd, like, what's the other approach? And to me, the other approach is clear. It's a strong towns approach. It's the four step process. Let's go out. Let's see where people are struggling. Let's do the next smallest thing, let's work on that over and over and over. Let's thicken up all of our neighborhoods that way, starting with our small towns, our mid sized cities, our big cities. Let's do it everywhere. But that is not the approach that gets you a grant, that's not an approach that gets the engineer a lot of money, that's not the approach that you know is going to in a sense, feel like immediate progress.
Abby Newsham 33:45
Well, it's unconventional, right? And something that I do want to highlight is that this this outcome, is not because they're a small town with that doesn't have the the right zoning code or doesn't have the right way of thinking about things, because this is the conventional approach to growth, just like large cities are taking that have lots of resources and have the the new fancy zoning code, and you know are maybe have people who are pushing for more strong towns, or, you know, urban design centric approaches, but conventional development is still happening, because that's still the conventional approach. So I do want to highlight that that you know, and even in the cities where some of the best things are happening, conventional is still conventional, and it's it's still a major barrier that has to be overcome.
Chuck Marohn 34:50
They're following the suburban experiment. They're following conventional wisdom. They're doing what a successful city does. And the thing is, is they just don't have. Enough, in a sense, Peters to rob to pay Paul's to pretend that this thing works long term. Yeah,
Abby Newsham 35:06
that's the challenge. It's not a huge area, it's not a large population, and it's it's going to end up costing more money if they continue to build this way and and I think they'll feel it more acutely. Yeah,
Chuck Marohn 35:20
so they run out of fiscal road more quickly. And you know, the sad thing is, when you read their plan that they've come up with, you know, I went and downloaded their plan, I can, I can visualize, in my mind, them sitting down and doing a SWOT analysis, and they're like, we're a beautiful city. We've got a fishing arbor. Is Age Friendly, it's cultural, it's all this great stuff. And then what's your weaknesses? Oh, we've got stagnating population Democrat democratic exhaustion, which I'm like, Yeah, you're you're asking small town people to do things that they know, ultimately, you know, in their heart is not going to work, is not going to be effective, but there's nothing else to do. And so you wind up with this battle between the people who like, I'm not wasting my time, I'm giving up, and the people who are like, keep going. Keep going, keep going. They don't have anything real to do. And so I'm, I'm like, reading this, and I'm like, you know, absence of family or in services, absence of a heritage plan. And I'm like, you these are, these are arranging deck chairs on a titanic because there's not enough fiscal road here for this place to survive on the current trajectory. And no one can see that, and no one has an alternative plan. So you get, you know, you, you've, you've been involved in these planning process I've been involved in these playing processes. You know, it's like, Hey, we've okay, I'm on. We've got 46 empty lots. We need to get those developed. Yeah, you got 46 empty lots. You never should have tried to develop in the first place. That's really not helpful. You know, like developing those lots will not help you at all. It will take a $5 million gap and make it a $4.9 million gap on an annual budget of $200,000 like it really won't do anything. You can't fix that problem with your current approach.
Abby Newsham 37:16
So what is the approach that you would propose? I'm
Chuck Marohn 37:21
gonna say to say something that is going to sound really cruel and heartless, and then I will answer your question. Years ago, like early, strong towns, 2010 11, I wrote this series, and I don't even have it anymore. It never ran, and I don't know where it is, but I wrote this series about hospice care for small towns. And I've had two grandmothers pass away from cancer who had extended hospice care, and so my writing was very reverential of the idea that people at end of life have dignity provided to them through this process that we call hospice, where people who are not the family because the family is really, really difficult and emotional and like a hard time, people from outside the family come in and just do The stuff that is needed to help this person transition to, you know, whatever comes next. And they do it with dignity. They do it with respect. They do it in a thankless way. It is a very beautiful thing. But they also have with them all of these tools that they say to like the person, like, it's okay, like, you, you people will be okay if you pass right, like, it's okay. And they actually help families through this in a way that is, I think, very beautiful. There's a lot of cities that have a lot of beauty. There's a lot of small towns that have a lot of beauty, that have a lot of heritage, I have a lot of things that are important, that that dignity and that beauty is slowly being robbed because they can't come to grips with the fact that they have no future. And so my, my, my whole series that I wrote was basically saying, like I love these places, like I love my grandmother and I'm happy that my grandmother's end of life involved the dignity of having hospice care. I would love some of these small towns that that deserve a similar amount of love to be able to receive that and have like their heritage documented, have the trophies in the school cataloged, have a museum you know that they go in, have I, you know, whatever it is that allows, in a sense, the essence of that place to live on, even when the place doesn't. So with that said, like, what? What would I do if I were Victoria Prince Edwards Island today? I think I. Would recognize that I live in a desert and I need to conserve water. I would recognize that I live on the edge of nowhere. I have a very tiny population. I have a small little beachhead that I've created on the edge of this, this land. And if I want to sustain that, I have to be hyper, focused on living like I live in a desert with no water. I have to conserve my cash. I have to conserve my resources. I have to make it so nobody in my town needs to own a car. And maybe, like, five people own a car, and we rent it from each other or share it to go to the next town. Maybe, you know, like I am opting out of the suburban experiment, and I'm trying to make my place as enjoyable and viable for the people that are there as possible with the lowest financial burn rate. Let's be real. I think for modern Americans and modern Canadians, that's a really hard ask. And
Abby Newsham 40:57
yeah, well, we have such a growth oriented mindset. I think it's really hard to in a place like this to say, well, maybe, maybe you can't grow yourself out of the current situation. And that's not to say that 20, 5100, years from now, economic market dynamics may be different, and they'll be in a completely different, you know, position, and maybe people will be moving to this area, and things will evolve and change. But to me, it feels a little bit like, like, forced growth, like, you know, the the answer is to bring more people in. And again, this isn't happening because it's a small town and they don't know better. I feel like every city does this, like, if we can just get more people, everyone's competing with each other for bodies and taxpayers. But there is no, um, there is no approach that considers the idea of, what do we do if we don't grow? What do we do if our population stays stagnant? How do like? There needs to be a planning approach for that, instead of growth being the answer to to everyone's problems. Well,
Chuck Marohn 42:25
what you're really talking about, what I hear you saying is, how do we have, how do we have an approach to growth that emphasizes stability first and growth second?
Abby Newsham 42:37
Yeah, exactly, exactly, yeah.
Chuck Marohn 42:39
Because what they've done here is they've said, we're at the roulette wheel. We're going to put it all on the number three, or whatever it is, and we're going to spin the sucker. And we know we have a 95% chance of losing, but we're going to go for that 5% chance of winning. The chances are even worse than that, but that's essentially what they've done. And we look at that and be like, that's insane. Like, why would you do that? That doesn't mean you can't grow. It just means that you can't gamble on growth where, like, the cost of losing is you lose your entire city. So how, how do you grow? I always, I always try to get people in small towns. Is really hard, because, again, like, what's the model we use? But if you are a city and you have 150 people, and you're adding a subdivision that would add another 150 people, again, that's like Kansas City going from what half a million to a million people in five years. Like, it's just not proportionate. Like, it doesn't work if you're a city of 150 people and you want to grow, what is adding 10 people look like? Because you can actually do that with cottages and infill housing. On your current system, you could get 10 more people. And if you did, your city would be better off than it is today with no added expense. Like, let's, let's do that first. This as easy, like, we can do that without the roulette will, without, like, making a huge gamble. Well,
Abby Newsham 44:08
the other thing that that keeps coming to mind, too is that, like, this is a little town that is on the ocean, right, and, and it's, it's very, very remote, and it's very charming and beautiful, and has all of these gorgeous historic houses. And it's like, I keep thinking about seaside where, like, they built this lovely village next to the ocean that is mostly a tourist destination, but, like, that's what it is, and it's been viable because of that, I just who is moving to this place to live on a cul de sac, on like an acre of land next to the ocean, like disconnected from the town, I feel like it just doesn't make sense as a development pattern. Um, like you think you'd want to, yeah? Please say it differently, because I'm really just speaking, okay, yeah, speaking from the heart here,
Chuck Marohn 45:08
if you add this big plot of land to the west of your city, and you said, what we want is we want tourism and growth and investment, and we're going to spend a bunch of upfront money gambling on making that happen. Yeah, you would build a Nova Scotia version of seaside Yeah?
Abby Newsham 45:29
Like that would be the the gamble that, if you have to gamble, I would say, lean into the things that that you are, if it really is that kind of place? Well,
Chuck Marohn 45:41
you wouldn't build a version, you know, a crappy version of exurban Kansas City in, you know, on an island in Nova Scotia, like, why would you do that? What? What? What distinguishes that from the exurb of Kansas City, not much, or a
Abby Newsham 45:59
mid sized to small Canadian city, right? The equivalent,
Chuck Marohn 46:06
yeah, like, this is the outskirts of, I'm trying to think of one of these cities that I've been to. This is a beautiful part of the world, you know? I mean, it's gorgeous,
Abby Newsham 46:13
and the original town is gorgeous, which is why it's, it's confusing to me, what if you, if you are to grow and if you are to expand and put new infrastructure in, it's, I think, how it stands out is its charm and beauty of the existing place. And I would think that that that's what you want to build off of, like, look at places like seaside and, you know, build off of that charm.
Chuck Marohn 46:41
Let me ask you this. I've been trying to get you to move to Brainerd for half a decade now, I know, romantically speaking, can you see yourself, like, spending years living in this little town? I can, yeah, can't you like, romanticize, like, what it would be like to live in a place like this,
Abby Newsham 47:01
yes, and a little town, but not on the cul de sac that, no,
Chuck Marohn 47:05
not on the cul de sac, but like, imagine what, imagine what it would be like. I mean, you've, you've got the lobster barn here, and the Oyster House, and, yeah, this little dock out in the sea. You could have a little ship like it like, I, I feel like it would not be hard to get 10 people to move to this city, right, like, next year, and 10 people that move there the year after. Like, if you really want to grow, there are ways to do this that add to the charm and all this that would bring in the type of people that would really want to live that life,
Abby Newsham 47:41
yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly. You're
Chuck Marohn 47:43
going after the person in the suburban cul de sac
Abby Newsham 47:48
makes, yeah, yeah. It feels like a mismatch, like it's, it's like, oh, well, this is conventionally what we think growth should be, which, by the way, again, every city does this, but it's like, well, what about something beautiful and as charming as the historic bones you have and building off of that kind of character?
Chuck Marohn 48:12
Yeah, and this is a sad thing to me. I mean, I've we did a project a couple years ago in Chisholm, Minnesota, part of our Community Action Lab program. One of the cities that we worked with was, was the city of Chisholm, and it was beautiful. It's like a beautiful place in so many ways. But the thing that we had the most struggle with, and the thing we finally had to agree to them that we would never bring up again, was this desire they had to build the suburban subdivision out on the edge of town. And I mean it for them, it was culturally important because their engineer was on board, their city clerk was on board, the council was on board. They had all this consensus. Everyone knew it was a bad project. Everyone knew that it was going to lose the money, and it didn't make any sense. And but their identity of, let me put it this way, their identity of success was something other than themselves, and then they projected that onto this subdivision, out on the edge of nowhere, and that became like their own personal avatar of what success looked Like, instead of looking at themselves as as beautiful and wonderful and successful, and the town they had is really like, great, just needing some love and some TLC. They looked out at the they they looked out at the world and said, We are inadequate. We are not enough. And here's what good looks like. It looks like what other people have
Abby Newsham 49:39
you? You hit the nail on the head. That's exactly what what I'm thinking of. I mean, it's like, that's what they had is is beautiful, and what they have is beautiful, yeah.
Chuck Marohn 49:50
And I think this is why I say there's no development pattern for small towns today. We copy the suburban pattern. I'll also say, um. The culture of small towns is one where we have conditioned them to not just be wards of the state financially, but to actually look, to actually look to other places as being of greater value, or other other ways of building. And I think that's sad, because, I mean, I live in a small town, this thing is struggling, and it it, it could be way better than it is, but in a lot of ways, it's a beautiful city and it could, you know, it could be so much better with just a little bit of work. Why we want to tear it down to make it more like a suburb? Really culturally hurts. It really culturally makes me sad. Well,
Abby Newsham 50:42
Kansas City, I mean, the urban core of Kansas City did it too. We have, we have large swaths of the city that have built a very suburban development pattern. And I don't want to speak for everybody who built it, but I think that there's a very similar psychology going on where they people are looking to other places as the avatar and that development pattern as being the physical manifestation of of success, right? And and not seeing the value of their development pattern, which is what I think is valuable about strong towns and Joe man cozy work is to actually look at the financial implications of these different patterns and recognize how valuable these places really are, and that you don't need to, you know, copy paste The Suburban pattern into something that is not only financially productive, even if it has if, even if it's disinvested in and has lower property values, but is also most likely quite beautiful because of the historic structures.
Chuck Marohn 51:56
Yeah, I I wrote a chapter in escaping the housing trap that started with JC Nichols, who's, you know, from Kansas City developer, real estate developer in Kansas City. And the whole gist of that chapter was about the disgust that the post war generation had with pre Great Depression development, and it's kind of incremental. Build it up, tear it down, redo it. It's always like, there's always a problem to solve, kind of thing. And JC, Nichols created this vision where it's like, we can skip all that messiness and just go to the end. We can just build places. Right the first time we can just build them, you know, perfectly, right off the bat, we have the money, we have the means, we have the intelligence. We are men of action. You know, that was the quote. And I do think that we put on a pedestal this heroic notion that we can skip all the messiness and just go to perfection,
Abby Newsham 53:05
yeah? Build it once to a finished state, yeah? But
Chuck Marohn 53:09
I mean, anyone who's had kids, I told you that I'm taking my kid to look at colleges, and, you know, I love her. I think she's perfect, I think she's amazing, but she's still a work in progress. I'm still a work in progress, right? There's no finished state, right? I think
Abby Newsham 53:25
that's about the journey, not the destination, folks.
Chuck Marohn 53:29
It's about the journey. And your city, you know has to, has to be something that is improvable, like will change. Well, you can improve over time. You can go back and look at the things that JC Nichols built in the 1950s and 1960s some of them have held up okay, a lot of them have not. The defining characteristic of a place that holds up over time is one that's able to adapt and change. And when we build things that are not adaptable, you get stagnation, decline, and if you're a small town, you get absolute failure and abandonment,
Abby Newsham 54:10
yeah, well, Chuck, let's leave it there, because I know we have to go. I know we don't have time for the down zone this week, so save something for next week,
Chuck Marohn 54:22
because we gave people 10 minutes of Minnesota talk at the beginning. So, yeah, that's the
Abby Newsham 54:28
pre up zoned. Yeah, yeah, we reversed it this time. Okay. Well, thank Thanks, Chuck, and thanks everyone for listening to another episode of up sound. Talk to you later, Chuck.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES
“Population growth called 'critical' for the sustainability of Victoria, P.E.I.” by Sara Fraser, CBC News (February 2025).
Abby Newsham (X/Twitter).
Chuck Marohn (Substack).
Abby Newsham is the cohost of the Upzoned podcast. Abby is an urban design and planning consultant at Multistudio in Kansas City, Missouri. In her own community, she works to advance bottom-up strategies that enhance both private development and the public realm, and facilitates the ad-hoc Kansas City chapter of the Incremental Development Alliance. When she’s not geeking out over cities, Abby is an avid urban mountain biker (because: potholes), audiobook and podcast junkie, amateur rock climber, and guitarist. You can connect with Abby on Twitter at @abbykatkc.