Strong Towns | Charles Marohn | Talks at Google

[@LaVacheDigue]

Here because of the Not Just Bikes channel. Love the talk.

[@DaCaldwell]

Same!

[@Oldschool_Gamer_]

This guy + notjustbikes = next American golden age

[@stevenm8970]

Unfortunately you'll need some serious change. America is incapable of charge when corporations run the government

[@mlembrant]

I got here from Notjustbikes ^.^

[@kdvinson5638]

Mother Earth says we Are going to do this. Now! with or without you. Reality Asserts Itself

[@CC.R0Y]

We can only hope

[@attentioncestpaslegal7847]

Notice that notjustbikes is not living in America.

[@Aeyekay0]

"our cities should not be worried about forcing people to walk a block or two, they should be worried about not being worthy of a one or two block walk" 37:00. This 100%

[@ncard00]

720p video quality!? Come on Google, 4K60fps really is the minimum standard for KZbin in 2023...

[@uniworkhorse]

Praying for the YT algorithm to promote this talk to everyone out there - super insightful!

[@michaeljfoley1]

That's my hope as well. This is a crucial message that everyone needs to hear. But I doubt they will. I think our fate has already been sealed, and a collapse is already locked in. At least those of us who have listened to Charles Marohn and others like him, will have a better understanding of what is actually going on, when it all goes down.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

@@michaeljfoley1 still time to leave....

[@boneless9311]

@@michaeljfoley1 you’re right in some sense, there is no solution to this anymore, just favorable outcomes. However if chuck is trying his hardest to change things we can too

[@skenzyme81]

Please, America. Listen to this man. 🙏

[@emiliofernandez7117]

never! I wanna be a fatty

[@acommentator69]

He is an elitist

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

@@acommentator69 how do you figure that lol.

[@acommentator69]

@@baronvonlimbourgh1716 he lives in a large house himself, then produces to bash them. Walk the walk, don't just talk the talk.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

@@acommentator69 ahh yes, you didn't watch the presentation did you?

[@kevinhawkshaw8784]

i wish i could like this a million times over. not only are his ideas incredibly powerful and hit home on so many levels for anyone who has the experience of North American urban living, but he's also an absolutely terrific speaker. he makes you want to run through a wall for him.

[@Account.for.Comment]

The ideas are pretty much basic. The problem is North America is new, many "cities" are only little towns with booming populations resulted because the cost of living or producing is higher in the cities. Most North Americans are settlers than reachers. With low cost of living, large houses, many don' t want the city with all it offered and do not cared that the suburbs are a nothing than a soulless mirage that bring more maintenance costs, more depression and a handicap. They pick the area, fall to fantasy given by companoes, andhated that someone else criticize their choice. What the speaker did is simply to bring it out to the surface, the harder part is to convince it to the non-convert.

[@ibfreely8952]

I like how he's talking money, economics and taxes. Maybe it will make people understand that this lifestyle cannot persist.

[@michaeljfoley1]

Unfortunately, guys like Charles Marohn never seem to get enough of an audience, to reach anything more than a tiny fraction of the population. At least those of us who do hear the message, will have some idea of what's happening when the collapse gets truly acute.

[@cameroncrocheron2711]

@@michaeljfoley1 o e

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

@@michaeljfoley1 only city planners need to hear it. And just need torefuse to keep building unsustainable.

[@boneless9311]

@@baronvonlimbourgh1716 no, all of us need to hear it. We all need to be collaborators in building our productive places

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

@@boneless9311 you can't reach everyone, so focus first on city planners

[@redmoon714]

The strong towns movement is what the United States needs.

[@michaeljfoley1]

This is great, I have been following guys with a similar message to this for years (namely Andres Duany and James Howard Kunstler), and I'm very happy to now be discovering Charles Marohn, who delivers this all-important information and message with great eloquence. Millions of people should be viewing this video, not just 10k. Jeez!

[@OwenRULESSS]

Stop subsidizing parking!!!! End minimum parking requirements!!!!

[@telocities]

Reminds me of a story my Dad told me about a new building to be built on hiking trail on a island, I think off coast of california, that had a requirement for parking lot even though it could not be reached by car.

[@SkashTheKitsune]

@@telocities America, for American cars... oh you were expecting America for Americans? no... they came down the list in recent years... they are now below your vehicle, keep those engines running

[@Masterrunescapeer]

Kind of completely disagree with it, should be minimum one parking bay per e.g. apartment. Biggest issue in the US is how everything is designed to be sprawled out, so it's a chicken vs egg problem at the moment, and you also can't get public infrastructure at the moment. I hope car sharing will start helping sort it out, if that cost is a bit less than actually owning a car, and it's convenient enough, I doubt many would keep owning a car, would make areas with medium density be quite viable/wanted.

[@MatthijsvanDuin]

@@Masterrunescapeer "I doubt many would keep owning a car" .. so why exactly are you saying there should be "should be minimum one parking bay per e.g. apartment" if you anticipate their disuse? Why would you force this ugly and unproductive waste of space onto people regardless of whether they have any need or use for it? My apartment doesn't have a parking spot nor have I ever felt even the slightest desire to have car or space to park one.

[@Masterrunescapeer]

@@MatthijsvanDuin because that's not the situation right now, you can't do it based on a possible future when right now it doesn't exist, you first have to bring proper public transit and then you can start exempting it.

[@stephensell7145]

The bit about Detroit was really sobering 20:15.

[@skippyasqueeze]

@Brady Raul ​ @Apollo Victor wow super cool that you guys both joined youtube one day apart just to say this! if it was the SAME day i'd be suspicious but as it is I'll have to try it out myself

[@safe-keeper1042]

Yeah, the part when he said "Detroit wasn't different, Detroit was just early" was incredibly chilling.

[@AllenGraetz]

@@safe-keeper1042 You're easily chilled.

[@thomasthuene3173]

One should not underestimate of how much zoning in this plays a role, much of it motivated by making sure that "undesirable" people cannot move to where you (the desirable people) have moved. Great example is Lexington, MA, which literally went on the barricades to stop the red line extension because they were afraid to have black people move there. Now they live in traffic purgatory.

[@InuJF]

Arlingtonian here -- that was Arlington, not Lexington

[@PankajBhambhani64]

Love the term "traffic purgatory", I think thats what it is and that's what they deserve.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

But racism doesn't exist in america. Obama was elected, shut up! Even though everything seems to come down to racism lol.

[@isidoreaerys8745]

This is a Magnum Opus, a Manifesto on American History and Architecture.

[@jooky87]

Wow one of the most comprehensive talks on this subject

[@jooky87]

Just shows perception is not always reality. The “poor” people are the hardworking people keeping things going.

[@michaeljfoley1]

I'm sure plenty of the wealthier people in the outer suburbs are hard working too, it's more a matter of, they expect their far-flung exurb subdivisions to have publicly provided urban-level infrastructure and amenities. It's that public to private investment imbalance, that makes those developments so financially problematic.

[@Tygearianus]

“We need to make cities worth a two block walk.” Hear hear!!

[@G5Hohn]

Zoning rules have a huge role in all this. Most of the reason you don't have complex neighborhoods comes down to zoning. In most small cities, you simply can't put a convenience store in a subdivision, even though that subdivision has excellent sidewalks and is otherwise walkable. Why do we think of walkability only in terms of walking for its own sake vs having something to walk to? Why can't I walk to a small store in my neighborhood? I'd love to be able to walk a block or two and get milk or bread instead of hopping in the car and going to the MegaMart. Heaven forbid you not want to budget 2 hours and $200 for a single mega grocery trip, but rather just want to get a single bag of some small items a 10 minute walk away. Strong countries are built on strong states. Strong states come from strong cities. Strong cities come from strong neighborhoods. Chuck is absolutely correct about the bottom up approach being the only viable path.

[@atomic.rabbit]

a bag of milk, right?

[@F14thunderhawk]

the problem is none of his conclusions are remotely correct even if his concept is correct. hes advocating for the same, incredibly expensive maintenance and budgetarily intensive spending and construction of infrastructure that cities currently undergo. a cheap road that a town normally builds? lasts 3 to 10 years. a Properly built road? lasts at least 70 years. Germany spends less per mile maintaining the Autobaun because Hitler had it built right. And its not like that highway system doesnt see abuse either, considering Patton had fun driving the Ruhr pocket up it with the 3rd army. If entire US Armored Brigades couldnt fuck the autobaun, why is Eisenhower's Interstate not rated for usage by US Armies? because Americans dont care to think about spending the money build infrastructure properly, just to get it built.

[@theultimatereductionist7592]

"Chuck is absolutely correct about the bottom up approach being the only viable path." No. THAT is what he is wrong about. Yes - governments ABSOLUTELY SHOULD give everyone a choice: walk, bike, car. Absolutely SHOULD, in fact, pander MORE to walking, biking than to cars. However, where Marohn goes wrong is pushing vague philosophies such as "bottom up approach". Top-down approach where you plan EVERYTHING so everything is INTEGRATED is EXACTLY what we should do. Idiotically piece-meal additions & renovations in a chaotic unplanned manner is exactly what has been done wrong for thousands of years: as he talks about it: the trial and error approach that has led to countless failures. He is talking about trial and error of evolution as a JUSTIFIED thing, without emphasizing the countless errors/failures.

[@beback_]

@@F14thunderhawk Lol Hitler didn't build shit. The Nazis you seem to look up to got their asses handed to them by... Russia, which given current events doesn't exactly look like a first-rate power.

[@thomasthuene3173]

@ 35:40: Do that small thing. Interestingly, during the pandemic, this is what many towns did. Seating outside, with allowing patrons to consume alcoholic beverages, suddenly was ok, and no American mass-extinction occurred. Pop-up shops on sidewalks, widened sidewalks and closed or narrowed city streets. Moody Street in Waltham, MA, or Main Street in Nashua, NH, were never as attractive.

[@SkashTheKitsune]

New York is doing it very wrong, they have enclosed much of the sidewalk to accommodate the "outdoor seating" to be basically an addition of the restaurant completely ignoring the purpose of that allowance

[@mattf3761]

MAKE BETTER USE OF WHAT WE HAVE!!! Yes! The first R in the recycling triangle is reduce waste. The cheapest construction project is one that didn't happen.

[@isidoreaerys8745]

“‘Maintenance Free’ simply means that it will never be Maintained.”

[@theultimatereductionist7592]

Well said.

[@ed1726]

What a great talk. Why don't politicians talk like this?

[@empirestate8791]

High-density areas are cheaper to live in, since you can rely on public transit, biking, and walking rather than a car, saving a ton of money that would otherwise go to fuel. Most infrastructure will cost less per resident, and more space will be available on the city outskirts for parks, warehouses, and other low-density developments which couldn't happen due to urban sprawl.

[@gildone84]

The only problem right now, and it would only be a temporary one if we were were to re-design more cities, is that demand for such places exceeds supply. That makes housing more expensive. There is no way I could afford to live in most of the most walkable, transit-friendly neighborhoods of N. America. We've chosen a hybrid-- a small city that is walkable to a degree, but due to the fact that most houses here are small and there are no luxury condos or apartments (yet), it hasn't become un-affordable. And, my town desperately lacks adequate transit too. We still have to drive more than we'd like, but it's not as bad as some adjacent cities.

[@capnpaco]

@@gildone84 That just says there need to be more high density areas though, right?

[@kyriacosstavrinides893]

High density doesn't however mean residential towers. High-rise residential towers have similar maintenance issues that suburban communities do. Take for example the tower that collapsed in Miami and realize that that specific tower's maintenance budget wasn't too different to other towers. High density is more like duplexes and small apartment buildings.

[@janganliatchannelini]

Damn this person should be a president of all countries

[@kevinfalconett8012]

We need more strong towns!

[@d.e.7467]

This subject is covered in depth by the KZbin channel "Not Just Bikes". People-centric should be the top priority. If that means walking or driving a car, then so be it. He is loathe to blame cars, but after WW2, the USA went car-centric, and the world followed.

[@richcampus]

"THE PROPERTIES OF A RAIN FOREST ARE EMERGENT. YOU CAN'T GO OUT AND CREATE A RAIN FOREST" @24:21

[@maxnewts]

The 1940s car biased suburbia development messed people’s perception of wealth up. It isn’t always about whether the families look like they are clean and simple. It’s about their productivity. I always say to people that wealth is not on the surface, as you can be plentiful in textures but still have low productivity and still be as constrained as someone with lesser quality of surroundings. (I.e. car, watch, clothes, fancy technology). I derive true wealth to be someone’s ability to use the products and objects around them in good resource management and productive mindsets to benefit their overall experience (i.e. choosing the bike over the car for shorter journeys so they can save money, switching their products which require fossil fuels over to electricity for things like heating and cooking, so they don’t have as grand a maintenance cost etc.) This isn’t about preferred textures from the big box store catalogue, it’s about building your life so you don’t have insecurities such as financial or housing lifestyles.

[@jeffcostner]

This is incredible and I hope America listens to the this man. I'm curious, though, what can be done to encourage people not to live in the suburbs? Part of the appeal is that it is so much more affordable to live in the suburbs than going into the heart of a city. An apartment in the heart of NY or Toronto is outrageously expensive but if you go to the outskirts of the city it's so much more affordable. I guess maybe I don't understand what the average person (who isn't a city planner) can or should do about any of this. It's interesting to learn about, though.

[@joshthegringo]

In my experience the major thing that keeps people locked into suburbs is good public schools. We need to find a way to make inner city schools more attractive.

[@DC-xj2fe]

Change property taxes to be according to what it actually costs to service/build infrastructure for an area (instead of houses' property values), and that cost alone would discourage a lot of would-be suburbanites. If that were the case, it probably wouldn't be more affordable to live in the suburbs.

[@lkrnpk]

Suburbs are not a problem if they are: a) more dense at least in the core b) they have a great public transport connection, train to downtown The problem is that the US does not have that in most places. You can still live in single family homes in Europe, for example, but then they are very close to some kind of ''suburban core'' which is in turn next to a train station. That suburban core has a few mid-rise apartment buildings where poorer people can live, and a bit more outside of that there are duplexes, triplexes and single family homes for wealthier people or people who just like that type of living. Since ''suburban core'' is much more dense, it can sustain shops, smaller malls, school, kindergarten, a doctor's office etc., so you don't need to drive far or even drive to the city at all, because your workplace too might be near a train/metro station on the other end (or other kind of mass transit). Essentially in Europe suburbia is a series of small towns along the routes of mass transit. Not just a huge block of same single family houses and cul de sacs. That also helps with gentrification issue, as poorer people still have apartment blocks where apartments are in suburbia but way cheaper than single family homes, so people mix more and there is a balance. And it helps with maintaining infrastructure too as more taxpayers live in the same area, which in turn also attract more shops and businesses. Also, more people use mass transit to commute so streets can be smaller

[@kyriacosstavrinides893]

I don't know about getting people to move out of the suburbs, but the first step is probably letting them fail.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

It is so expensive because everyone wants to live in a walkable neighbourhood but they aren't allowed to be build anywhere.

[@gravityhypernova]

Wondered what people were talking about with the Diverging Diamond fiasco. I wondered what this 'fiasco' was. After looking it up, it sounds like it was just a bunch of unfounded internet outrage that ignored what was actually said in order to 'refute' Charles without actually addressing what his critique was. It went from being about the fact that gigantic overworked highways are expensive and alienating at the human scale (even if he acknowledged it is efficient for traffic) to an argument that it was successful simply because it reduced pedestrian injuries. Ignoring that this is just moving the goalposts from the entire stated theme of this video and what Charles' work seems to be focused on: the financial unsustainability and thus irresponsibility of these large scale and expensive infrastructure projects, which kick the can of maintenance down the metaphorical road. If people watched this video and have an ounce of comprehension, they can see that he is challenging the previous decades of design, so we can avoid the need for those sorts of dangerous eyesores like the DDI in the first place. The rest of the globe has examples of ways that accomplish transport and livable places, but America has a fondness for doing things differently. .. no matter how stubborn or inefficient. Why? Because some people make a profit while doing so. But everyone ignores the long term, cumulative maintenance costs: another form of real debt. This talk was before the pandemic, but this year has contributed toward the difficulties of every city to simply keep up with sewer, road and water maintenance. Companies have stopped bothering to renew office leases, and discover they are happy to save that money while also finding that many of their employees are happier working from home, without an unpaid and boring or stressful commute. For being able to spend less time on the road, burning gas, and more time with family. TL;DR: The DDI does what it was made for better than what came before... but it's still a polished turd. The point was never to congratulate it for being well-polished, it's to point out that it's still shit.

[@theultimatereductionist7592]

The DDI is exactly an example of unplanned idiotic piece-meal evolutionary thinking, rather than top-down integrated and plan EVERYTHING including proper safe walk paths and bike paths approach.

[@pux0rb]

Late reply, but this is one of the best summaries I've read about the DDI. People missed the entire point of the criticism of car-centric infrastructure.

[@allanroberts8611]

Chuck is a legend

[@888ettio]

Amazing speaker, we should be talking about this more. I would like to hear him on solutions tho

[@tomasbritt4444]

Notjustbikes mentions a return back to the traditional urban model as the solution

[@nwm-art4177]

I moved from the burbs into the city near light rail. Best decision. Life is better.

[@movia1234]

I am reminded of this quote from an old right conservative, "Change is essential to the body social, the conservative reasons, just as it is essential to the human body. A body that has ceased to renew itself has begun to die. But if that body is to be vigorous, the change must occur in a regular manner, harmonizing with the form and nature of that body; otherwise change produces a monstrous growth, a cancer, which devours its host. The conservative takes care that nothing in a society should ever be wholly old, and that nothing should ever be wholly new. "

[@nmhood]

Fantastic talk 🔥

[@kopias]

Amazing talk. Thank you.

[@roteschwert]

Funny thing, Charles Marohn is one of those rare Republicans that aren't attached to financially insolvent suburbia. This guy is actually practicing what he preaches (fiscal conservatism). They'd probably call him a RINO nowadays.

[@SexyCommandoMeso]

People like Charles are the best shot society has at actually fixing any of this stuff. There's a lot of similar talking points on the other side of the political spectrum, but from what I've seen on KZbin at least, their content tends to veer too far into the leftist/socialist angle in a way that probably alienates many of the people who would otherwise be on board (and crucially, some of those people likely hold the public offices required to put the rubber stamp on these changes). The eye-opening thing about the Strong Towns presentations is they show that _even under the lens of capitalism_ suburban sprawl is a bad idea.

[@roteschwert]

@@SexyCommandoMeso Agree. The overwhelming amount of Yimbyism is preached by urban leftists which instantly turns off a lot of folks

[@theultimatereductionist7592]

Why do you say Marohn is a republicunt, a member of the most fascist hypocritical full-of-shit anti-American anti-freedom-for-those-who-deserve-it terrorist organizations on the planet?

[@theultimatereductionist7592]

​@@roteschwert All your anti-socialist anti-communist pro-anarchy hypocrisy (ALL laws ALL government = communism, socialism) is what turns people off from conservatives/conservatism, and the extreme 2-party dictatorship in the USA: only republicunts and democraps. Never any Greens, Socialist, Communists, Transhumanists or any other parties. Just evil conservatives and useless worthless centrists in power.

[@jannanasi4444]

I think he might be independent nowadays. He wrote an article in 2019 ("What Democrats and Republicans Get Wrong (About Each Other)") where he mentioned a political perception gap test and wrote "For the sake of the test, I identified as a Republican (I’m really not these days)." He's also on the Board of Advisors for the American Solidarity Party.

[@muhilan8540]

Strong Towns red-pilled me...

[@skenzyme81]

Muhilan Selvaa Ditto, some of his early videos blew my mind.

[@bhatkrishnakishor]

Seen you on Lex's videos, you got good taste 👍

[@safe-keeper1042]

For me it was Not Just Bikes. Then again NJB borrows a lot from Strong Towns, so I guess it was Strong Towns by proxy.

[@kaiserteddie9564]

@@safe-keeper1042 the guy says he was inspired by strongtowns

[@OhWell0]

This guy is great!

[@rhizocarp]

18:13 Three-car garage with attached house. ROFL!

[@gtsupport8375]

Not just bike brought me here :)

[@DougGrinbergs]

4:37 Fresno boundaries from 1897... Watch that growth!

[@JurOz1980]

Thx, good talk!

[@MaydayAggro]

So sad seeing the main street of his town today versus the way it started and grew.

[@someguyontheinternet7856]

These ideas need to catch fire.

[@shane_rm1025]

Read Progress and Poverty by Henry George

[@susanbaynham-evans8453]

Great talk thank you.

[@justinleemiller]

Brilliant guy.

[@vincewhite5087]

Tell cities, no new malls. Transform old malls first.

[@ShidaiTaino]

No more malls

[@ianhomerpura8937]

@@ShidaiTaino or replicate what Japan, China, and many other Asian countries are doing: build the malls either beside or above railway and bus stations. Build them where the foot traffic is, and they will never run out of customers.

[@eem8039]

I am a plumber and I love little plans

[@charlestolley2294]

The ideology he's preaching was once called "conservatism", it's a hard ideology to come by anymore

[@kylejmarsh3988]

Too bad the slides are not showing.. though I really like the suit Charles!

[@Jordan-ws5vn]

Fantastic talk

[@Nabium]

People would rather live in unsafe communities where they die from traffic accidents due to bad infrastructure design, than to live in unsafe communities where people die from violence caused by social issues. It's more instinctive to us as a species to fear a another man than a car. But America might be that one beautiful culture where both of these communities can flourish together. Having both more car accidents and homicides than other comparable developed countries. Of course poverty, social issues, car culture, gun culture, gun laws, car ownership, traffic laws etc are a part of it, but, we seem to forget the impact of urban planning and infrastructure on both crime and traffic safety. While a drunk guy driving in America killed a man, a drunk guy driving in Europe injured a guy. You can blame the drunk guy all you want; but the difference between life and death in the situation was the urban planning and infrastructure. And if you cram all the poor people into projects and into inner cities, then guess what; it's gonna be hard for a kid growing up there to be an example of social mobility. The American attitude is often that of responsibility of the individual; you blame the kid when he starts dealing drugs. But you didn't grow up in his artificially contructed neighbourhood where all the unemployed were squeezed together, so, you don't really understand that if you were in his shoes then you might be throwing your shoes on a wire to signal you've got a new batch of drugs coming in. It's not just your individual personality which caused you to be a working member of the community, it's about the circumstances which shaped you. And America's urban design is one of the root causes for several of it's major problems, especially traffic related deaths and homicides. There isn't a single country in the EU with higher homicide rates or traffic-related death rates than the US, not a single one. Even Norway which is a very car dependent country, the US has 6 times as many traffic related deaths. Caused by poor urban planning more than anything else.

[@Monsterdrinker98]

best comment ever goddamn…

[@davidsixtwo]

Really good & useful

[@adamschrepfer1086]

32:39 Peoria Illinois!!

[@stevenpetryk]

It would be nice if this talk overlaid the slides that he's talking about while he's talking about them.

[@karlamcgee5183]

yes

[@Iansdaboss]

At 33:40 he mentions Steve *something* .. can anyone decipher what he's saying.. Mazan? I can't find on Google.. Seems interesting..

[@mgjmiller1995]

Steve Mouzon. Engineer and New Urbanist

[@davidgardner7618]

super interesting!

[@macioluko9484]

@34:03 Eventually if we keep on this path we’ll end up with a country not worth defending.

[@benderboyboy]

1 million poor people will pay more tax than 10 billionaires.

[@Zarrx]

Assuming you started and are the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company why would you report more than necessary on your income? it would be clearly obvious that you would keep your recorded personal income in 200-300k or so. So yes, 10 people reporting under $500,000 on their personal income pay less tax than 1 million people reporting $28,000 to $40,000 dollars on their personal income. If you want to tax the rich you need to reduce tax incentives and tax breaks for incorporated companies.

[@timmccaul]

Any available research on the affects of large scale apartment complexes that get dumped into the isolated neighborhoods

[@Chiszle]

Time for said change.

[@vincewhite5087]

Also all the codes.

[@ThePixel1983]

"We all have to copy Detroit." - Feels like watching a horror movie and screaming at the screen "No, don't go in there!".

[@yougobike]

Did you listen to the whole recording? He said Detroit messed up and they did. Thus we messed up too when we copied. He said we should not had copied them back then.

[@DougGrinbergs]

34:55 fix a struggle - just do it: tactical urbanism en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_urbanism

[@Fixtheproblemwithgoodpolicy]

❤

[@tyrvinodinson9790]

That's what happens under capitalism, the wealth gets striped out by the ultra wealthy and the working class gets left to suffer the consequences

[@wendypennell9432]

We need little bodegas in suburbia

[@vincewhite5087]

Gradual is good. Bootstrapping.

[@vincewhite5087]

Most Canadian cities that the downtown makes more money, only if office & condo towers. But these areas don’t look like the old strip mall in other pictures. Now my city has over 40% empty towers now &it’s getting worse.

[@NK-vd6wv]

CoVid. Pandemic is the only vulnerable aspect.

[@Account.for.Comment]

@@NK-vd6wv Not exactly. We know what the pandemic bring in crowded areas, but suburban areas, the datas is harder to find and easier to lie. It still a bigger hassle to bring in neccessary supports, much easier to die without someone else noticing. Also, not all high-dense cities are crowded if the urban planners did their jobs right.

[@Beroean30]

Canadian cities are urban spawls

[@Trinhnguyen714]

perhaps it would help if our kids are/were to be attracted to stay and or come back... instead of dreading i.e. "can't wait to run off away etc..."

[@danny-li6io]

They should do a discussion about how actively Google engages in censorship.

[@vincewhite5087]

Most of homeless & high crime is near towers too.

[@sonoftheright]

*shows Williamsville* "This is another place in Upstate New York." Dude, this is literally in the suburbs of Buffalo, which you were just talking about.

[@muhilan8540]

Technically a different place

[@vincewhite5087]

My city is always hype todo crazy uppy things, but doesn’t want to clear snow & stuff, but for crazy crap they find all kinds of money. Need new examples. Crack house or abandoned homes don’t pay taxes.

[@theultimatereductionist7592]

I really wish Charles L Marohn would read my comment and respond to my question/criticism about philosophy, which is: Isn't building a completed brand-new development/ecosystem the LOGICAL HOLISTIC INTEGRATED way of doing things? .e.g such as the FANTASTICALLY WONDERFUL Swiss train system. Isn't that BETTER THAN STUPIDLY INCREMENTALLY TACKING ON stuff, such as making a car-dependent city, then tacking on a bike lane by painting a line down the road, then tacking on a handicap ramp, as an afterthought?

[@musicotensai]

He’s talking about what’s already built. You can change a single family home to a duplex. Allow tiny homes and low rise apartments in the neighborhood. The other option would be teardown neighborhoods and displace people. The swiss already had traditional way of incremental building and efficient land use. The next logical step was their rail system.

[@AllenGraetz]

I love the confidence Chuck has in declaring that the outcome a political process, taxable value, is a measurement of economic activity and financial productivity. Wonderful stuff. I can' imagine why nothing of the sort is found in academia.

[@addammadd]

4:30 oh man you know stuff’s going pear shaped when Fresno comes up. Fresno, the butt filled ashtray of California. Care to guess its political distribution?

[@vincewhite5087]

They are spending it in police, fire , ems

[@miridium121]

Great talk, horrid camera work. Got dizzy watching.

[@thomaswade3072]

"the sidewalk ends right off screen" unfinished and pointless, like most google products

[@erikwsince1981]

His answer at the end about the automobile is disappointing. The other nations that he’s talking about, don’t rely on the automobile as much because they haven’t built their infrastructure around the automobile alone, they’ve built it around multiple modes of transportation, and they’ve made not having a car a possibility because of it. That should be the goal. You shouldn’t need a car just to live in society. Period. I feel he’s missing his own point here. Kind of weird.

[@timothygroten4193]

No what he’s saying is that the car dependency is a result of the way we finance our development. The goal is not to eliminate cars. The goal is to change the way we finance and implement development. When this is changed, an outcome will be less car dependency. He was just trying to emphasize that we need to focus on finance/development as the root cause to be dealt with, as it causes all of the problems we see today (infrastructure debt, car dependency, housing prices, etc…)

[@gemelwalters2942]

@@timothygroten4193 yes but the problem with that answer is it dismisses the very deliberate development choices to facilitate automobiles. This wasn't just some accidental design born from poor financing or something we stumbled into. It was years of lobbying and influencing policy to appease the automobile industry. He's answering the "how" but not the "why". If you're city is built to facilitate cars and not ppl then the problem is very much the cars.

[@williamjameslehy1341]

American cities weren't car-dependent until after WWII, and the change happened within a single generation. No reason we can't undo all that damage in another generation.

[@saideepakb]

Surprised/confused he didn't say a word about race.

[@theultimatereductionist7592]

"Chuck is absolutely correct about the bottom up approach being the only viable path." No. THAT is what he is wrong about. Yes - governments ABSOLUTELY SHOULD give everyone a choice: walk, bike, car. Absolutely SHOULD, in fact, pander MORE to walking, biking than to cars. However, where Marohn goes wrong is pushing vague philosophies such as "bottom up approach". Top-down approach where you plan EVERYTHING so everything is INTEGRATED is EXACTLY what we should do. Idiotically piece-meal additions & renovations in a chaotic unplanned manner is exactly what has been done wrong for thousands of years: as he talks about it: the trial and error approach that has led to countless failures. He is talking about trial and error of evolution as a JUSTIFIED thing, without emphasizing the countless errors/failures.

[@vincewhite5087]

Suburbs of Rome are bland & boring too. Been there.

[@gildone84]

His concern is financial productivity.

[@Netherlands031]

This talk could have done with some more calculations and graphs

[@decappa]

he talks about the ills of suburbs and only says the word suburbs like one time

[@vincewhite5087]

You said 13,500 people twice when talking about home town.

[@jackbillings4109]

Yes. His hometown’s population didn’t change, but it now covers 10x the size

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

Because the sane amount people live there as before. That is the point.

[@mitchelldavis9372]

This doesn't make sense to me. If cities are built all the wrong ways, Why aren't they dying? Why is no one in charge trying to fix it? Like what is the timeline for something to cause change?

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

They are basicly sustaining themselves by sprawling out even more. And just only doing the bare minimum of maintenance on infrastructure to patch it up to where it keeps working, that is why roads are in a sorry state, bridges are barely standing, people still get poisoned from lead pipes etc. And most cities own the land in the city limits that is not yet developed, selling that off to developers to build shiny new stuff to keep the lights on, but ironicly also taking on more future liability they can not sustain. The cash from those sales funds the most acute maintenance needed on old infrastructure, and the new infra that was needed for the new development can be ignored for the next 30 years before that starts failing. Not just bikes did a video on this. It's basicly digging one hole to fill another into forever. This can be done for a pretty long time actually, you can keep an old car running for years if you just keep patching only the most important things as cheap as possible. It will look like a wreck, it will have some holes, the seats will be broken, a window and a couple of lights missing. But it will still drive you to work for years.. Until it just sudenly seizes catasrophicly on the highway, like detroid.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

And why is nobody trying to fix it? Because politicians that want to change anthing or god forbid tries to touch anyones hunk of steel or proposes some lefty stuff like having places where people are more important then cars or spend money on anything making a city more livable gets chased out of office with pitchforks...

[@Paul_C]

Growth Ponzi Scheme. Search for that, and remember the man who perfected it still resides in jail, or did he die?

[@perrybiava1574]

I am handicapped. I am not going to ride a bike or walk three blocks. I am also not going to share a wall with a noisy neighbor.

[@Masterrunescapeer]

Currently living in an apartment, I think I've heard my neighbors once when they were shouting in front of my front door, that's pretty much it, have never actually heard their conversations/TV/loud music. The issue is that lots of apartments are built as cheaply as possible and then you get paper thin walls, there are enough ways that you can reduce noise that besides actually shouting and general heavy walking, you don't have much noise in an apartment. Would love if the US spent some time doing things like figuring out that carpets are actually good in apartments for noise dampening, maybe put in legislation in regards to wall thickness/techniques that minimize noise transference, etc. Also class of neighbor, rules in regards to noise that are enforced, etc. Does mean I myself can't play super loud music though, which is a bit annoying, but have a headset.

[@heatherswanson1664]

I totally agree. I think we should make accessible transit a priority. In addition to making regular transit vehicles accessible to mobility device users the city needs to provide transportation options such as vans for people with disabilities that can take them to places such as doctors appointments door to door, at the same cost as regular transit tickets.

[@nate4fish]

It’s about choices, building codes can address noise if the people decide they want to force that.

[@Masterrunescapeer]

@@heatherswanson1664 here in Europe, Vienna, all subways can be rolled onto with a wheelchair, there's elevators. Trams (street cars) if they're the newer ones are also wheelchair friendly, there are still a couple of old ones but never two in a row, so max wait off-peak is around 10 minutes if you get really unlucky as a wheelchair user (as in just missed the previous one). On-peak ~5 minutes since one every 2-3 minutes. For visually impaired there are guiding strips on floors to stairs and subway, etc. The entire bus fleet is also low floor. In Cape Town, South Africa, the entire MyCiti bus system is wheelchair accessible, so are all stations. Most modern transport systems take disability into account, the US just has a lot of older systems still from the 60-80's which really isn't great. Wish they'd get public transit properly sorted, but the urban sprawl makes it difficult for most places to have a cost effective one.

[@kyriacosstavrinides893]

It's not one or the other. There's plenty of possibilities in between.

[@tasteflavored]

Go out and create unique and interesting microcultures in your immediate area so companies can monopolize and profit from it. He doesn't even acknowledge the fly in the ointment to all his flowery ideas: gentrification.

[@Paul_C]

It is America, however hard you campagne, you are not going to talk people out of their cars. End of story.

[@fermatachambersoloists]

Worked on me, and countless other young people. Maybe older generations have a love affair with cars but we sure don’t.

[@williamjameslehy1341]

Worked for me. I felt "free" when I first got my license. But then I went to college in Boston where you don't need a car thanks to dense, mixed use cityscape and public transportation, and I learned what true freedom was. Being dependent on a machine that costs tens of thousands of dollars plus costly fuel and maintenance is a terrible way to go through life. A world where you can walk out your front door and get to work, school, shopping, restaurants, friends' houses, etc with just your own two feet is an amazing feeling.

[@pistachiogarza339]

Multifamily homes is a terrible idea. lets say you bought your side of the duplex 20 years ago and it is starting to need repairs, wages have remained stagnent as workers output has become more efficient, while cost of living and building materials have inflated. You cannot afford to repair out of pocket , and banks refuse to finance mortgages on multifamily homes. It's the wealth disparity, and the rich refusing to pay taxes. Construction of a big box store or chain hotel is often publicly subsidized, in some cases they do not even pay property taxes because they claim the sales tax and jobs will make up for the city footing the bill.

[@cinnanyan]

I don't know where you heard that banks refuse to finance mortgages on multifamily homes but it's not true.

[@pistachiogarza339]

@@cinnanyan That's what my grandmothers credit union told her when she needed to repair her duplex. Maby it was ageism after all, It instantly soured me on banks/credit unions and duplexes. We trusted her credit union because she had been a member for 70 years at the time.

[@Masterrunescapeer]

@@pistachiogarza339 you will not get a mortgage if you are over 70 about, all you have is a pension and if pension collateral is not enough, how are you going to afford a mortgage? What happens when you die, does asset cover the cost, plus is it worth it for a lower cost dwelling in the case that lawyers need to be involved (as they need to lay claim to estate on her passing)? Once you get old enough, it becomes very difficult to get loans.

[@nate4fish]

It really rubs me the wrong way that we allow our governments to give tax breaks to companies especially Wall Street

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

They work everywhere else..

[@bobboberson2024]

Well, this guy no longer has any credibility after his Diverging Diamond fiasco. But you can fail that hard and survive in America.

[@geoman798]

Maybe give this presentation a watch, its quite eye opening, and then you may see that his critiques on the diverging diamond were extremely valid

[@bobboberson2024]

@ Search him. He just likes to give engineers a hard time.

[@gildone84]

@Bob Boberson... And another one lacking the observational and comprehension skills to grasp that the DD video was a commentary on how pedestrian-friendly they are and nothing more. He clearly explained that in the first 35 seconds--and you completely missed it. I'd suggest refraining from judgments about failing hard and still surviving, as you very much resemble that remark. And since Marohn is a P.E. himself, he is certainly allowed to critique his profession. Instead of being so butt-hurt over nothing, engineers should be mature and adult enough to accept the fact that, like all professions, engineering isn't perfect and is causing some problems that need fixing.

[@bobboberson2024]

@@gildone84 Aw, pipe down. Don't get so angry. Your personal attacks are unbecoming. Charles is provocative, I'll give him that. He thought the diamonds were "ugly." Not exactly deep thoughts. But he'll be fine. I'll be fine. And you... Not sure.

[@ShidaiTaino]

@@bobboberson2024 oh no an intersection. God have mercy on us all

[@w415800]

Just read about this guy opposing the Diverging Diamond, currently on a youtube safari down voting all his videos.

[@ghostofeverettruess]

i dont get it

[@melpomeninelaj8881]

@@ghostofeverettruess www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/5/14/that-ol-diverging-diamond But Calvin here is being naive because as you can read also in his article: 'I love the notion of me being "the worst example of our dramatic outrage culture" - my kids would find that funny. I also find it fascinating how comment after comment insists that DDI is a huge success because it handles traffic well. Yeah, I'm sure it does, but the video I was reacting to tried to make the case that it was "pedestrian friendly" which it most certainly is not.'

[@skenzyme81]

Calvin Ye The “Diverging Diamond” is a brilliant gem of traffic engineering. It’s great for cars... right now. In the long run, the DD is part of an unsustainable pattern of development. It’s tough.

[@tindo7147]

The problem is he won't admit he's wrong.

[@al-du6lb]

@@tindo7147 @calvin ye you guys obviously don't fully understand his message. The diverging diamond does it's job well, but Chuck is envisioning a world where we don't need diverging diamonds, the federal flower of the US.