Better! Cities and Towns has just featured items from Charles Marohn’s new book, “Neighborhoods First.” He will be an SFU City Program speaker on October 24. (You can reserve here.)
Here’s an excerpt:
In 2012, I wrote a series of posts for the Strong Towns Blog contrasting the Taco John’s restaurant site along Brainerd’s Washington Street with the same sized “old and blighted” block just up the street to the west. The City Council had approved 26 years of tax subsidies to assist Taco John’s in moving to this new location, an action consistent with the city’s comprehensive plan, zoning codes, engineering approach and all of the professional advice they were receiving. My posts questioned the justification for that decision – tax base growth and job creation – and spelled out some hard facts.
The “old and blighted” block containing two liquor stores, a barber shop, a pawn shop and some other local businesses creates a total tax base that is 41% greater than the brand new Taco John’s. It also provides more jobs, has more small business owners and the businesses there patronize more local professionals and services than the franchise restaurant. In short, the old block is simply more financially productive for the city, even before deducting the subsidy from Taco John’s.
Brainerd, Minnesota is my home town. It was established as a stop on the Pacific National Railway line, a place where box cars would be built. It was a place of railway prosperity up until President Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway system marshalling in the age of 18 wheeler trucking. When I was a child the men from northeast Brainerd walked past our home on Third Avenue, carrying their lunch boxes to work in the rail yards and filing past on the way home about 5 minutes after the four o’clock whistle blew every afternoon. In those days it was a complete neighborhood with a vegetable garden in nearly every backyard, tree houses, corner stores, baseball fields, skating rinks, churches and an elementary school named after Lowell, the great astronomer. We had it all in those days just as we have today and as the most recent census data illustrates.
My father who is now 95 years old still lives in the family home that I helped build when I was a child in grade school. The house is still faintly pink stucco upon my mothers insistence, the trees that we planted as children are now towering giants. Our family has been invested in this neighbourhood for a very long time; we know a thing or two. We know who built what and why they built things the way they did. We love our neighbors and we help each other out when ever we can.
So as for the superficial opinions and idiotic ideas of Mr. Charles Marohn, we don’t need narrow streets, striped lanes, sidewalks that go every where, and garages on back lanes. We need you to go away, so we can practice riding our bikes backwards while sitting on the handle bars, so we can run along roads and alleys and through backyards, so we can build hot rods in the garage while the whole neighbourhood drops by. If we wanted to be different we would be different on our own terms and all by ourselves.