Principles of a Strong Town
Let’s continue to explore the Strong Towns Movement with a shallow dive into the six principles of a Strong town
1. Financial solvency is a prerequisite for long term prosperity.
We touched on this briefly in our first post. Our cities and towns need to be run like the businesses they are. Short-term growth through development has to be thoughtfully considered for its long-term impacts on the municipal budget. Our communities can no longer afford the massive maintenance backlogs they have amassed and must recognize that building more and more infrastructure will only add to the problem.
2. Land is the base resource from which community prosperity is built and sustained. It must not be squandered.
Land is a limited resource and we must put it to its highest and best use. Farmers inherently understand this and lean toward planting crops that will yield them the most profit. Density can help cities and downtowns put their land to the best use, creating a larger per square foot tax base than sprawling suburban box store developments often yield. This density often requires less road infrastructure too as it changes the dynamic from car oriented to pedestrian oriented. Changing the orientation of how people move makes for a healthier town and healthier people.
3. A transportation system is a means of creating prosperity in a community, not an end unto itself.
A transportation system is essential. We need to move people of all abilities through our cities and towns in an efficient manner. People need to get to their jobs, run errands to keep their households going, and escape to activities that help balance mind and body. All of these things help create prosperity. However, increasing our road burden to move people further away from a city center with more and more space between each house does not create prosperity. It creates sprawl and car dependencies and results in more impact on municipalities’ already limited maintenance budgets.
4. Job creation and economic growth are the results of a healthy local economy, not substitutes for one.
Putting people to work for the sake of giving people jobs may work at the federal level, but it rarely works at the local level. When we chase growth at the local level we often end up with more infrastructure than we can sustain long term. Small incremental growth tends to yield longer term success because we are growing at a pace that is self-sustainable.
5. Strong cities, towns and neighborhoods cannot happen without strong citizens.
In order for a community to be successful, it needs to have a large base of engaged citizens. We need to create a culture where the people that live in a community look out for each other and take care of the environment around them. It’s when everyone is invested in their community and works together that real change can be affected.
6. Local government is a platform for strong citizens to collaboratively build a prosperous place.
City governments are often the implementation arm of policies coming down from the federal through the state government. Because of that local governments then orient around being on the receiving end of policy. Instead, we should look at local government as a collection of its people. That means cities and towns need to orient toward our community members and not take on top-down initiatives that may not yield long term benefits for our community members. Our local government needs to become an advocate for its citizens, not an implementer of someone else’s agenda.
Our next post in this series will explore how High Plains Architects has adopted Strong Towns principles in its project work.
