MyWHaT

We can solve our unemployment problem and our municipal finance crisis with a different pattern of development. http://fb.me/sVFEkUW5—
Strong Towns (@StrongTowns) January 12, 2011

Placemakers may be dreaming, but even if we follow that path and maintain looming deficits, pension or otherwise, we will still have great places to live and party together. Right?

This latest article from Strong Towns, which I inadvertently left off of this morning’s post, details how the dominate land-use patterns weaken our local economies. The writers use images from the 1950′s to highlight how we had more social exchanges based on local connections in our cities just 2 generations ago.

As they write, “These places were economically viable and resilient by definition. If they were not, they became ghost towns. That fact in and of itself tends to make people more thoughtful about where they place their priorities and how they spend their resources.“

It’s worth a late afternoon Twitter post and a quick read for anyone concerned about city economics.