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Reviews
Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity by Charles L. Marohn Jr.
janae_mt's review
challenging
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.0
The content of this book is fantastic, I can't recommend it enough! It really has changed my view and inspired me to be a more active community member.
quipkick's review
3.0
The main point is great: much of American city design is flawed, often creating a temporary illusion of wealth that is unsustainable due to long term infrastructure commitments. Ideal cities should be more dense, adaptable, and designed around people (not cars). That being said, the execution of the book is a little too wandering and anecdotal for me to recommend it to anyone wanting to dig deeper into these ideas.
stoicloofah's review
3.0
I listened to the audiobook, and I was very skeptical at the beginning. Marohn begins with some big ideas and analogies, and I just didn't believe it at all. However, once he pivoted into more specific points regarding American suburban development and actual city planning anecdotes, I think he found better footing.
Marohn borrows many ideas from Taleb's "Antifragile", which I read and quite enjoyed. However, I think he maybe leans on it too hard and would have made a stronger case just working from his original example.
Having grown up and lived in suburban North America my entire life, I can see how much of the criticism is fair even if I don't know much about the actual financial situation of the cities I have lived in. It's also hard to know if he's right that we will face a decline and reckoning over the next 30 years, or if life and development will fundamentally change.
Overall, I found the book quite thoughtful, and Marohn seems like a good guy trying to do the right thing.
Marohn borrows many ideas from Taleb's "Antifragile", which I read and quite enjoyed. However, I think he maybe leans on it too hard and would have made a stronger case just working from his original example.
Having grown up and lived in suburban North America my entire life, I can see how much of the criticism is fair even if I don't know much about the actual financial situation of the cities I have lived in. It's also hard to know if he's right that we will face a decline and reckoning over the next 30 years, or if life and development will fundamentally change.
Overall, I found the book quite thoughtful, and Marohn seems like a good guy trying to do the right thing.
espringer43's review
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
3.0
Great ideas. Very repetitive. Pointless last 50 pages.
shmandanas's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
5.0
The five stars here does not include writing ability- this book was a bear to get through. That being said, I've been on an urban planning kick recently, and this was highly informative. I listened to it on audiobook, and now I need a physical copy so I can take notes on it. This gave a ton of compelling arguments against modern american cities- ones that I will be using as my town works on updating its zoning code. As noted in some other reviews, there are parts of historic prosperity (i.e. slavery and undervalued labor) that the author doesn't go into at all, but as an introduction this has thoroughly convinced me that the way we're doing cities is wrong.
wrongvswrite's review
4.0
We can find local, proximate solutions by walking the ground instead of bird's-eye-view planning. Historically, cities have been built gradually with small experimental changes rather than sweeping plans—since those abrupt changes will call up maintenance all at once later rather than on a rotating basis. Don't kick the can of debt down the road for our descendants. Invest in the infrastructure we currently have instead of bloating out—redefine how we measure "success" and "growth."