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A review by cpbartoli
Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity by Charles L. Marohn Jr.
informative
slow-paced
4.0
Overall a great resource for thinking about infrastructure and how communities can/should seek to evolve. The ideas presented in this book have been following me around for weeks -- I haven't stopped thinking about inefficient infrastructure investments and maintenance costs since I finished those chapters, and my wife is tired of hearing about it.
The author has tendency to sprinkle in a lot of anecdotal "evidence" to set the scene for the points he's trying to make, which works well for rhetorical purposes but kinda rubs me the wrong way for a book that otherwise tries to be very data-driven. I especially am taking the historical anecdotes with a grain of salt -- assertions about how ancient civilizations operated their cities and how prior generations had city planning knowledge that is now lost to time smells a little too much like retVrn rhetoric, and I'm hesitant to take seriously historical analyses from a non-historian. (Caveat: My gripe here would be greatly softened if he linked sources backing his historical references, but I consumed this in audio book form and there was no mention of any such sources.)
Otherwise, this book was eye-opening for me in helping me see infrastructure development and the growth and evolution of a community through a different lens. I don't know enough to check this myself, and haven't seen other sources confirming his analyses, but everything he describes (the inefficiency per-square-foot of modern developments, the long-term costs of maintenance outweighing the income generated, etc.) sounds plausible and provides an interesting (if a little alarming) way to view the infrastructure we interact with every day.
I also really appreciate the sections of the book beginning to discuss how we move forward from here. It's not exactly a checklist, but I think it's a great resource for planners and activists to start to nudge their communities in a different (stronger) direction. I'll almost certainly be picking up a physical copy to use as a reference in the future!
The author has tendency to sprinkle in a lot of anecdotal "evidence" to set the scene for the points he's trying to make, which works well for rhetorical purposes but kinda rubs me the wrong way for a book that otherwise tries to be very data-driven. I especially am taking the historical anecdotes with a grain of salt -- assertions about how ancient civilizations operated their cities and how prior generations had city planning knowledge that is now lost to time smells a little too much like retVrn rhetoric, and I'm hesitant to take seriously historical analyses from a non-historian. (Caveat: My gripe here would be greatly softened if he linked sources backing his historical references, but I consumed this in audio book form and there was no mention of any such sources.)
Otherwise, this book was eye-opening for me in helping me see infrastructure development and the growth and evolution of a community through a different lens. I don't know enough to check this myself, and haven't seen other sources confirming his analyses, but everything he describes (the inefficiency per-square-foot of modern developments, the long-term costs of maintenance outweighing the income generated, etc.) sounds plausible and provides an interesting (if a little alarming) way to view the infrastructure we interact with every day.
I also really appreciate the sections of the book beginning to discuss how we move forward from here. It's not exactly a checklist, but I think it's a great resource for planners and activists to start to nudge their communities in a different (stronger) direction. I'll almost certainly be picking up a physical copy to use as a reference in the future!