Strong Towns’ critique of America’s car-centric sprawl sounds appealing. But its proposed solutions rely on a conservative politics that prioritizes ‘wealth creation’ over just and equitable urban planning.
Strong Towns’ critique of America’s car-centric sprawl sounds appealing. But its proposed solutions rely on a conservative politics that prioritizes ‘wealth creation’ over just and equitable urban planning.
Very good article. I found my way to them through Not Just Bikes and resonated with many of their ideas - removing stroads, undoing car culture, even localism in the broad sense. This lifted the veil from my eyes.
They don’t actually mean Strong Town in the sense of strong communities, they mean local capital having more freedom to extract wealth more productively. Guess a broken clock and all that. Since it does happen to be true that denser building will results in more uses of the same land, and that means less car culture, etc.
Still I think the word for them is useful - they are popularizing some important ideas. But we can’t forget who they’re trying to empower in the end.