The Opposite of Strong Isn’t Weak. It’s Dependent.
This article is the final part of a series on city finances. Here’s what we’ve covered so far:
You don’t have to look far to see that things feel unstable right now. National politics is a mess. State legislatures are swinging wildly from one state to the next. Economic signals are chaotic. Interest rates, federal funding, inflation, labor markets—it all feels like shifting sand.
If you’re a local leader, it’s hard not to feel whiplash.
But the problem isn’t just that the world is volatile. Volatility is part of life. The real danger is how unprepared we are to deal with it. We depend on cities, neighborhoods, and each other to provide a buffer—but when those supports are fragile, so are we.
The more vulnerable our local systems become, the more disconnected we are from the decisions that shape our lives. Public services falter. Delays pile up. Desperation creeps in.
And local priorities get drowned out by distant agendas.
What It Means to Be Fragile
When we say a city is fragile, we’re not just talking about financial weakness. Fragility is what happens when a local government is overextended, under-resourced, and deeply dependent on decisions made far away.
It’s when your budget relies on state grants that might not show up. It’s when you’re stuck maintaining infrastructure you can’t afford to replace. It’s when you have no slack, no redundancy, and no ability to pivot.
It’s when you can find the money to hire a grant writer, but not someone to empty the trash cans in the park.
A fragile city doesn’t get to make its own decisions. It waits to see what someone else will decide. Every time a federal infrastructure bill passes—or doesn’t—every time a state budget is late, every time the bond market jitters, a fragile city feels it.
Not later. Immediately. Fragile cities aren’t in control of their own destiny.
Political Whiplash and Local Chaos
Fragile cities live at the mercy of distant decision-makers. When laws change in the statehouse, when federal funding priorities shift, when regulations tighten or loosen, they’re the first to be destabilized.
New York City is the largest and arguably most important city in the United States. Yet even it is subject to the instability that fragility invites. Right now, the city is locked in a political battle with the federal government over its congestion pricing program—money that was intended to support the city’s overwhelmed and deeply indebted transit system. Officials argue, correctly, that transit is essential to New York’s economy, its quality of life, even its survival. But if that’s true, why doesn’t New York fund its own transportation network?
Here’s a clue: As of the end of 2023, New York City had already spent nearly $300 billion of future revenue—almost three times its annual intake. The Finance Decoder shows that its Net Financial Position is deeply negative. And the two-decade trend is a steep decline.
In plain terms, New York City is insolvent. The Finance Decoder shows its obligations are more than double its assets. I’ve written before that places like Kansas City and Houston are in trouble, but New York’s situation is far worse. Kansas City is trending to insolvency. Houston is flirting with insolvency. New York has been insolvent as far back as we could collect data.
This is what fragility looks like at scale. Even the biggest, most economically productive cities in the country are now dependent—on subsidies, on favorable politics, on the hope that someone else will come through. When they don’t, the result is crisis.
One year, a city might be encouraged to invest in one kind of project. The next, those incentives vanish. Meanwhile, the commitments made under the old program still remain.
This kind of political whiplash is not just inconvenient. It’s dangerous. Fragile systems have no buffer. There’s no margin for error. And when something breaks—fiscal, political, or physical—there’s no way to adapt quickly. That’s when dysfunction can threaten collapse.
The Trap of Outside Assistance
For cities smaller than New York, the promise of help from Washington or the state capital can be especially enticing—especially when budgets are tight and local needs are growing. The idea that a grant or infrastructure program might finally bring prosperity is powerful.
We saw this dynamic play out during the pandemic, when federal aid arrived in large amounts and with relatively few strings. Cities suddenly had the resources to patch over revenue shortfalls and keep operations going. Some used the money to fill temporary holes. Others expanded programs and made new commitments that now require ongoing funding. That short-term relief created a long-term bind.
Now many of those cities are back where they started—only with deeper obligations and fewer options.
For example, the Finance Decoder shows that Salt Lake City consistently funds 10% of its total spending from outside revenue sources, but the city saw a spike of outside resources during the pandemic.
At the same time, lower interest rates allowed Salt Lake City to reduce the amount of its budget it spends on interest.
Yet, despite this increase in available revenue, the Finance Decoder shows Salt Lake City’s Net Financial Position continuing to decline.
As well as the city’s total liabilities increasing in relation to its capacity to meet them.
When circumstances change—when interest rates rise, when federal priorities shift, when programs vanish overnight—cities are left holding the bag. Plans that once seemed like windfalls start to look like burdens. Decisions made to secure outside funding—whether it’s building new facilities, launching new programs, or expanding infrastructure—often come at the expense of more meaningful, locally driven priorities.
Suddenly, we’re stuck funding what we could get a grant for, not what we truly need. The things we care about most—like maintaining parks, fixing roads, or supporting community services—fall by the wayside, sacrificed for commitments we made under a different set of assumptions.
We have to ask ourselves: do we even want to play this game? Do we want to widen the highway to qualify for federal funds, even if it means slicing through our downtown and weakening our tax base? Do we want to chase grant dollars that demand new growth on the edge of town, while our core neighborhoods crumble? What do we think we're gaining?
When cities build their future around the hopes of distant aid, they make decisions that prioritize outside approval over local needs. That’s not strength. That’s dependency.
What It Means to Be Strong
A strong city doesn’t mean a wealthy city, or a growing city, or even a city with all the answers. It’s a place with options.
Strong places aren’t dependent on one stream of revenue, or one industry, or one tier of government. They can adapt. They have built in some resilience—not just with emergency preparedness, but in their everyday budgets, development patterns, and decision-making processes.
A strong town has enough local revenue to maintain its core infrastructure. It has land use patterns that create more value than they consume. It has leadership that’s responsive primarily to residents—not merely focused on the priorities of higher levels of government.
When a strong place gets bad news from the state capitol or Washington, it can absorb the shock. When conditions change, it can pivot. When something breaks, it can fix it without waiting for permission or a bailout.
If the past few years have shown us anything, it’s that uncertainty isn’t going away. In fact, the pace of disruption seems to be accelerating.
We can’t control what happens in D.C. or on Wall Street. But we can control how much our communities rely on them. The Finance Decoder can help your community see where it needs to have a deeper conversation, and what real challenges it needs to address in order to grow stronger. It will make apparent the trends that are making your city fragile. It’s free, uses publicly available data, and is easy to implement. It’s time to get started.
The choice your community faces is between fragility and strength, but the opposite of strong isn’t weak.
It’s dependent.
Charles Marohn (known as “Chuck” to friends and colleagues) is the founder and president of Strong Towns and the bestselling author of “Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis.” With decades of experience as a land use planner and civil engineer, Marohn is on a mission to help cities and towns become stronger and more prosperous. He spreads the Strong Towns message through in-person presentations, the Strong Towns Podcast, and his books and articles. In recognition of his efforts and impact, Planetizen named him one of the 15 Most Influential Urbanists of all time in 2017 and 2023.