The “Strong Towns” Book Is Out Today | Hacker News Reader

The “Strong Towns” Book Is Out Today

strongtowns.org

57 pointsBreadmaker27 comments

If you do one thing, email your city council members and ask them to eliminate parking requirements. Here's a sample email which also explains why:

Parking minimums should be eliminated or significantly reduced in central neighborhoods where we've invested in bike lanes, walkability, and transit.

By insisting that we dedicate space for cars even in areas where residents have expressed interest in walking, biking, and using transit, parking minimums "build in" demand for driving and make it easier for people to drive than to use the transit alternatives they prefer.

Parking minimums also make housing more expensive even as our region faces a critical affordable housing shortage. The housing crunch disproportionately affects the poorest among us, who often don't have cars or struggle to afford gas. Why are we requiring these critically affected people to shoulder the cost burden created by parking minimums?

This looks like it's chock-full of interesting ideas, but who is the target audience for the book? I don't believe I have much control over how my city is organized.

City governments are really accessible. There are regular public hearings where anyone is entitled to monologue at decision-makers for several minutes at a time, sometimes with hilarious results. I mean, could you imagine the President being required to sit through 3-minute-per-person public comments?

Elections are swayed by tiny numbers of votes. Power rests with small groups of retired homeowners who bother to show up. And decisions made there have a greater impact on your life than most elements of federal policy.

>> Power rests with small groups of retired homeowners who bother to show up. And decisions made there have a greater impact on your life than most elements of federal policy.

so much this, young americans are systemically disenfranchised by how local governments are run

> so much this, young americans are systemically disenfranchised by how local governments are run

If by "routinely disenfranchised" you mean "regularly fail to show up to vote" then I would agree with you. Perhaps with the exception of university students registered at a parental home, I don't see how one could claim young Americans are materially disenfranchised in regards to local elections.

Council meetings are held when normal people need to be at work.

In my neck of the woods they are held in the evenings, well after a typical 9-5 working day.

Same, I agree with the above poster re: failing to show up. I was involved for a number of years in an attempt to get a aquatic center built in my city to support both club and high school swim teams. By far the most difficult thing about it was getting kids (who would be the largest beneficiaries) to show support in city council meetings.

Ironically, we are almost there, but my swimmer is about to graduate and will probably never swim in the pool.

How about regularly Hosting public meetings during hours when young people are working?

Given that this is the second reply of its class, sounds like some of y'all have sketchier local councils than I do.

Perhaps this disenfranchisement is more of a regional issue.

I don't think it's necessarily sketchy. Any time you pick will be better for some people than others, and it's possible that earlier is more convenient for the groups who demonstrably want to attend their meetings. For example, if the people who come to your meetings are primarily stay-at-home spouses and retirees, you'd probably be inclined to pick a time when they're most comfortable.

> There are regular public hearings where anyone is entitled to monologue at decision-makers for several minutes at a time, sometimes with hilarious results.

Are there restrictions on non US citizens?

You line up at a microphone. No one is checking papers.

You actually have lots of control! Cities are representative democracies, and you have an elected official whose job is to represent the interests of you and others in your district.

Your representatives make decisions about zoning codes and land use policies that are the literal rules for how your city is organized. They can do things like pass tree ordinances that regulate when people can cut down old growth trees, make a bicycle master plan to improve mobility in the city, establish incentive programs for entrepeneurs in targeted industries to boost the local economy, and more.

> I don't believe I have much control over how my city is organized.

I am not sure where you live, but I find the opposite is true. Where I live, in Denver, CO, USA, I have found that my city council members and state reps are often responding to emails directly since they have little or no staff.

I have found them to be super receptive and easy to talk to. If you have concerns, and you are polite and thoughtful, your ideas will carry weight with them.

You have much more influence locally than you think! Go to city council meetings and speak your mind. Local politics is the easiest and highest-impact way of making a difference that affects you personally.

City governments are run by the people who show up. Start showing up, and you can change your city too.

I started a YIMBY group a few years back, and I've met and talked with pretty much everyone on our city council at this point, as well as our state representative (who voted for HB 2001!).

This is a town of around 100K.

Get involved in public-private partnerships, like economic development councils or your housing authority. It takes some time to understand how the money flows and who really has power, but they do a lot of para-government work and have a lot of influence. You would probably start on a side committee, not the full board, but they’d be happy to have you.

The public comment period at city council meetings is not where change happens, sadly. It should be taken more seriously by both officials and the public.

You do. There are so many referenda, at least in the US, on seemingly inconsequential things that end up having a huge effect on the layout and organization of a city. Transportation taxes, light rail lines, zoning, affordable housing minimums… in aggregate these policies can remake a city.

You would be surprised. Smaller local government can certainly be influenced by the few who are motivated enough to show up to town halls. Unfortunately, most people have obligations so that type of people who show up are often elderly or moms with a spiky blonde haircut.

Is this not the same idea as "My vote does not matter"?

In some ways but to steelman they are constrained to not be within their power to change even if they were elected or seized power.

You can and should yay or nay developments of importance locally but some things are on long time tables or resource constrained such that they wouldn't be that great of an idea even if they had broad support in principle.

I finished it last night. I wish a number of the arguments had provided more numbers to back up its points. In one section early on it uses a chart of city cost/profit from a given works, using a real world example, and then presents a chart to show its flow- but doesn't give any numbers on the axis. I liked the arguments presented in the book, but this made my brain worry about cherrypicked data.

Also, the entire last chapter could be cut entirely - it was an unneeded addition to the book.

All in all, a decent read, some interesting arguments.

I've always enjoyed the Strong Towns blog posts that occasionally get featured here on HN. Is the book a repackaging of the blog or is it new material? How does it compare?

The book is all new material, but you could also think of it as a distillation of ten years of blog posts into something you can read in a day.

If you want to get your head around the entire idea of Strong Towns so you can decide how you feel about it, the book is the fastest and easiest way to do it.

Be warned, though, once you start to see the dysfunction in our cities, you can't unsee it.

Just finished it. Simultaneously infuriating and persuasive.

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