System Failure and What to Do About It
The Strong Towns conversation is enriched by participants from across ideological categories—it’s part of what makes the movement resilient and keeps it growing. Here are two new podcast episodes where hosts tug at different strings, testing the principles we share and celebrating the future we are building together.
Each of these conversations touches on how the systems we’ve built are failing us—how the promises our cities made are going unfulfilled—and what we should learn from these failures to guide us in a better direction.
Doomer Optimism with Anarcho-Contrarian and Kara Marshall
The marketing brochure for the Suburban Experiment includes a picture of social isolation, says Chuck Marohn in this conversation about community, financial, and environmental resilience. One of the first steps to rebuilding fiscal stability in our cities is rebuilding the connection between neighbors and personal investment in one’s place.
Chuck and his hosts share the experience of being brought up in rural places, where responsibilities such as road care and emergency response were held primarily by residents, rather than by municipal systems. When these services become systemized, it can be tricky to maintain the sense of personal responsibility and effect that keeps them functional and financially sustainable. But from system failure, we might just be able to build something better.
One small step toward rebuilding that Chuck shares is in bringing up children with a strong connection to their place. Enjoy many beautiful, personal anecdotes while you listen in.
World Magazine’s Listening In: “A Conversation with Chuck Marohn”
This conversation with Warren Smith is centered on the question of what our built environment looks like when we put humans, not systems, cars, or the buildings themselves first. Their discussion weaves over the line between the technical, mechanical elements of the engineering profession, and the real effects it has on the opportunity for humans to live well in a prospering place.
In addition to reviewing some of the foundations and core revelations of the Strong Towns movement, this podcast explores the idea that the cultural divide our society is dealing with is not one of conservatism and progressivism, but of top-down problem solving and bottom-up townmaking.
When it comes to solving the problems our cities face, Chuck says, whether those are problems of financial stability or climate change, “public policy can't overcome us not being neighborly.” There’s a full transcript of this one available, too.
The Strong Towns approach is creeping steadily into all corners of our society, without regard to political affiliation—you can help by sharing conversations like these, and planting the seeds of the movement where you think they’ll grow.
Lauren Ronnander, the Director of Communications for Strong Towns, is an actual idealist who loves making things and double-spacing the end of sentences. Before joining the Strong Towns team in 2020, she worked as a journalist and an editor. She lives with her husband and an almost uncountable number of animals (including cats, dogs, sheep, chickens, and rabbits) in a super-awesome neighborhood in the American Midwest. Her experience in the Alaska Bush, downtown living in an up-and-coming Midwestern city, and now residing in a rural Chippewa Valley, Wisconsin, community has provided her with precious insight into the many ways our places can grow stronger.