Strong Towns

the Strong Towns approach is not about telling you what to do, but instead how to think about what to do. A method of thinking not a method of doing. It’s a way to explore uncertainty and give yourself, and your community, the greatest likelihood of success.

Carmel, Indiana is NOT a sustainable model

What Carmel has done is incur nearly half-a-billion dollars in debt to build all the happy, pleasant, comfortable amenities we see today, without a clear plan on how they will retire the debt.  History tells us that when wealthy communities leverage debt to induce growth, the public is ultimately called upon to bail them out .

The Strong Towns Approach

1. Relies on small, incremental investments (little bets) instead of large, transformative projects.

2. Emphasizes resiliency of result over efficiency of execution.

3. Is designed to adapt to feedback.

4. Is inspired by bottom-up action (“chaotic but smart”) and not top-down systems (“orderly but dumb”).

5. Seeks to conduct as much of life as possible at a personal scale.

6. Is obsessive about accounting for its revenues, expenses, assets, and long term liabilities (“do the math”).

We Need Growth. But Only If It Generates Real Wealth.

It doesn’t have to be true that the more we grow, the poorer we become. The key is to reorient the way we approach growth

Why Cities are Flying Blind When It Comes to Their Own Debt

Municipal debt hides in plain sight, but it is a distant afterthought.

Few cities can tell you how much debt they have. In the accepted way in which cities maintain their books and report on expenditures, there is no line item for debt. Municipal debt is accrued and accounted for in various ways that would shock most people, especially those familiar with private sector accounting: a bit here and a bit there, with loads of fund transfers obscuring where cash comes from and where it goes.

Debt is Not a Funding Source

Public officials and bureaucrats can blow up a city with debt. They can cancel the future of a community in a way that is nearly indiscernible to the public until it’s too late. In fact, it’s often done for the very purpose of making today’s stresses – cash flow stresses – indiscernible to the public. Debt is way too seductive for those without skin in the game.

The Growth Ponzi Scheme

When you have a leaking roof, you don’t put an addition on your house. When your car engine is sputtering, you don’t upgrade the speaker system. This is an easy and obvious policy for cities to enact; the only thing preventing them from doing so, is poor recognition that they are in on the scheme.

Accrual vs Cash Accounting Methods

If local governments -- or state and federal governments for that matter -- had to follow accounting rules of the sort that we would find proper and necessary for less important institutions, debt would be recorded as a real, financial liability.