The Savannah Urbanism Series

Our good friend Kevin Klinkenberg has been doing some fantastic work in his capacity as the Executive Director of the Savannah Development and Renewal Authority. Earlier this year, I was honored to be invited by Kevin and his colleagues to speak, along with Joe Minicozzi of Urban 3, at an event they called The Dollars and Sense of Urbanism.

They have now released the videos from the event. For those of you that have not seen Joe and me speak together, we tag-teamed this one and you can watch that. However, if you've been around here a while and heard the core speech, you might enjoy the extended Q&A, which I found to be really interesting. Lots of good questions and a discussion that went in some new directions.

More from the Curbside Chat

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America's Suburban Experiment
America's Suburban Experiment

For thousands of years, humans built settlements scaled to people who walked. In a generation, Americans transformed an entire continent around a new transportation technology. We often fail to appreciate how we are testing this approach as we go. Quite simply: it's a massive experiment.

Mechanisms of Growth
Mechanisms of Growth

America’s cultural belief is that growing cities experience not only opportunity and prosperity today, but also success far into the future. There is a built-in assumption that new growth pays for itself today and generates enough wealth to sustain itself generation after generation This is a flawed assumption.

Illusion of Wealth
Illusion of Wealth

New growth creates an illusion of wealth. Local governments experiencing growth look and feel successful; they have high revenues and very little immediate costs associated with them. Long term though, as the liabilities start to come due, they learn that a free road isn't really free.

Productive Growth
Productive Growth

The biggest problem we face in this country is not a lack of growth. What we lack in America is productive growth—growth that builds wealth generation after generation. Productive growth makes a place better with age. It's full of cycles, endings and beginnings, rather than being a linear journey toward decline.

Incremental Development
Incremental Development

We like our places to emerge fully formed and then we expect them to never change, but that's not how life works. Cities need to be able to change and adapt, to start small and mature incrementally over time. We can't wait around for a big developer or a mega-project to fix our cities. The kind of development we need today happens from the bottom up.

Traditional Development
Traditional Development

The traditional development pattern has tremendous financial upside and limited financial downside. In contrast, our new, experimental approach is incredibly fragile with limited financial upside and a downside that can literally go negative. We can learn from the past in order to stop making the mistakes that will condemn our future.

Top Story, Marohn, Curbside ChatCharles Marohnurban3, georgia