By Marie Oehlerking-Read, Project Design Assistant

A few weeks ago, Sarah Jane and I attended a lecture by Chuck Marohn from an organization called Strong Towns. Neither of us had heard the Strong Towns philosophy before, but by the end of the lecture we were both inspired by what Chuck had to say.

In an hour, he provided a very strong argument for saving historic downtowns without ever saying the words historic or preservation. He spoke the language of city officials, economic development professionals, and private developers. He pinpointed the challenges that communities across the country face and outlined ways to solve those problems. The solution that he provides is essentially what we are trying to accomplish through the Main Street approach.

Energized by Chuck's words, we talked to Debra, who agreed that we should watch the lecture with the rest of the office. Group consensus in the office is that we can all learn from what Chuck has to say. His mission goes beyond historic downtowns to encompass entire communities. Within that mission, however, revitalization of historic downtowns is a large component.

Watch the video and let us know what you think. We found certain parts of Chuck's presentation to be helpful and have include a few highlights below, but his presentation might be useful to you in other ways. We would love to know how.

9:15 - ROI of street maintenance in suburbs and new commercial park vs. city
23:00 - growth through debt accumulation
48:40 - most valuable building – not big box but historic downtown

Strong Towns Philosophy - http://www.strongtowns.org/

The mission of Strong Towns is to support a model of development that allows America’s towns to become financially strong and resilient. America's current approach to growth emphasizes investments in new infrastructure to serve or induce new development. This approach uses public dollars inefficiently, destructively subsidizes one type of development over another and leaves massive maintenance liabilities to future generations. A Strong Town approach emphasizes obtaining a higher return on existing infrastructure investments. We can no longer simply disregard old investments in favor of new, but instead we need to focus on making better use of that which we are already committed to publicly maintain.

As advocates for a strong America, we know the following to be true.

Strong cities, towns and neighborhoods cannot happen without strong citizens (people who care).
Local government is a platform for strong citizens to collaboratively build a prosperous place.
Financial solvency is a prerequisite for long term prosperity.
Land is the base resource from which community prosperity is built and sustained. It must not be squandered.
A transportation system is a means of creating prosperity in a community, not an end unto itself.
Job creation and economic growth are the results of a healthy local economy, not substitutes for one.

We seek an America where our local communities are designed to grow stronger in the face of adversity, to be the solid foundation on which our shared prosperity is preserved.

There are no universal answers to the complex problems America’s cities, towns and neighborhoods face. At Strong Towns, we seek to discover rational ways to respond to these challenges. A Strong Towns approach:

Relies on small, incremental investments (little bets) instead of large, transformative projects,
Emphasizes resiliency of result over efficiency of execution,
Is designed to adapt to feedback,
Is inspired by bottom/up action (chaotic but smart) and not top/down systems (orderly but dumb),
Seeks to conduct as much of life as possible at a personal scale, and
Is obsessive about accounting for its revenues, expenses, assets and long term liabilities (do the math).

Strong Towns Curbside Chat - Austin, Texas - Oct. 29, 2015

Commissioner Brigid Shea hosted a public event for the group Strong Towns on October 29th, 2015. Founder and President Charles Marohn spoke at the Travis County Commissioner Court.