I have long been familiar with a couple of the people behind Strong Towns. I think they have some useful insights and nobody else comes close to communitarianism as a way forward

But yeah, some stuff they say rubs me wrong

Great read! I always found Strong Towns’ critiques of North American suburban planning useful because they put things in terms that liberals can understand easily - essentially, that widening roads and encouraging low-density development ends up costing towns more money, and that we can provide better services to more people by building more densely with more mixed uses. I hadn’t looked into the actual recommendations of Strong Towns’ founder, though, and this article points out some real doozies that are good to keep in mind when using his critiques.

Not to compare the two in terms of what they aim to accomplish, but The New Deal was largely the same

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.

I’d never read Strong Towns directly, though I’ve read tangential books like Walkable Cities by Jeff Speck. In those contexts I had interpreted the financial aspects as a good way to pitch the idea to Liberal folk and any governmental restructuring I must have glossed over. This article makes me wonder if I should review and reassess those takes and adjust how I share information on the topic.

A good read!