Reviews

Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity by Charles L. Marohn Jr.

bonedipp's review

5.0

in depth book about the ins and outs of American city design. the book is dense and mainly for people want a more in depth perspective of the failures of the mid 20th century planning. A key concept of the book is that land is expensive and our current use of the land is expensive and wasteful and we should reevaluate where our funding should go.

jercox's review

4.0

Persuasive and we'll presented arguments. Not quite willing to give up my suburban family existence yet, but thought provoking discussion of the growth dependence and lack of sustainability our country has ended up with.

maddyb001's review

4.0

This book and its concept of sound municipal finances were super interesting. It is more of an economical book than an urban planning book. I wish it had given more viable options for what to do rather than focusing entirely on the current situation and how that extrapolates out into the future.

nicmcphee's review

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

I came to the idea of the Strong Towns movement through people focusing on transit issues, so I think I expected more focus on transit in this book when there's actually very little. That's not a problem (the book is about what the book is about), but it did distract me some at first.

I think there are a lot of important ideas here, but I struggle to feel fully convinced for two reasons:

• There's a certain sense of "I've been to a lot of cities and talked to a lot of people, so trust me on this" throughout. I think I would have liked both more concrete examples (of which I assume he has many to hand), and more concrete data (which may be harder to come by, although I suspect he has a lot more of that as well).
• He describes himself as having historically libertarian leanings, especially when it comes to national politics, and that comes through in a variety of ways throughout the book. While he acknowledges the importance of things like redlining in the past, it's not obvious how his very locally focused approach would help address these historic and systematic problems. This seems particularly problematic in areas of the U.S. where, for example, clear efforts to disenfranchise significant communities of voters makes it clear we can't leave everything to local control.

That said, I find his general arguments about civic insolvency persuasive and, despite my earlier grumping, I do think his focus on primarily bottom-up solutions has a lot of merit if we acknowledge the risks and apply it with care.

In general I'm glad I read the book, but suspect what I really want is for him to come out to our town and help us analyse what we're doing right and wrong. Maybe that means the book was very successful in achieving it's aims? Or maybe it means it left me uncertain how to proceed on my own. I'm genuinely not sure.

samsmucny's review

hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

crestonmd's review

informative reflective slow-paced

4.5

katieegzim's review

informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

hannahdain's review

hopeful informative inspiring medium-paced

In terms of a non-fiction book I found this book really enjoyable. To be fair I also find city planning and related topics super interesting. It was a bit tough getting into the book at first, but a few chapters in the book definitely became more interesting. It did feel like there was a bit of repetition on topics, but nothing too annoying. I did enjoy the writing style, which I think helped keep me interested and reading. Overall I would absolutely recommend! 

davidmd's review against another edition

hopeful informative medium-paced

4.0

Strong towns is doing some of the best thinking about cities. This book is invaluable, and very accessible. However, I was not a fan of the narrator.

morganevans's review

4.0

Definitely a must read book for 2020. If you want to learn more about your own local community this is a great book to get you thinking. Marohn starts off with an American history about how our suburbs and cities have changed since the WWII boom and how they may not be able to sustain that continuous growth forever, just look at Detroit. The first half of the book explained where and how local governments funnel their finances normally and the second half of the book were the author's gentle suggestions to save and maintain our roads, sidewalks and buildings instead off rushing off to build new every single time. He has some basic ideas rooted in solidarity that seem very obtainable at the local government level.