Quality over quantity

At lunch today I read from a book that I just ordered last week titled Thoughts on Building Strong Towns by Chuck Marohn, founder of the Strong Towns organization and movement. I've committed to myself to read a chapter a day and write a blog post with some thoughts. So today's chapter is titled If it creates jobs then it must be good, right? The premise of this chapter is that we as a country at our various local levels (federal and state too) have focused on the wrong things to create jobs and to create continued growth. We've focused on making all kinds of subsidized incentives in order to bring in any kind of job no matter what. We pay little to no attention to the quality of these jobs or if they actually do anything to directly pay for the liabilities that we have in our cities or contribute to a high quality of life. Our current policies create the incentives that result in us having far too many places in US cities that look like this:

This is far too common in the US

Chuck is right on in this chapter. Our cultural approach to just about everything is to do the dumbest possible things, the things that bring quantity without looking at any of the important details that make up the quality of these things. In the case of jobs, we think that we'll continue to have better cities if only we create more jobs through two primary ways: increased infrastructure spending and playing the tax incentives game to attract jobs. So as Chuck asked, how's that working out? It's not, at all. We can no longer deny the qualitative side of things. Most cities in the US are literally crumbling. Ask yourself how can this be while we are still the richest country in the world?

The best economic strategy for a city is to create the most appealing and livable places that speak for themselves. If our places are utter crap in ways such as not being able to walk to things and having to drive everywhere, creating cheap built environment of the infrastructure and the building stock and having poor environmental conditions, then yes, you're going to have to bribe people to come and stay there. But why play that game? Why not create cities that are financially sustainable (meaning we don't build sprawl and we don't build new stuff only to abandon the old), visually attractive, highly walkable (again, less sprawl, more compactness), gives first class status to walking and biking instead of having to drive everywhere, making your city less noisy again by substantially reducing the need to drive a vehicle, encouraging and creating all kinds of fun local events to go to, be apart of and enjoy, etc.

This list is all about quality over quantity. We cannot continue to create cities that are built with a "throw-away" mentality. We're building things that need to survive for a long time because those are the only things that we actually take great pride in. Almost nobody will take pride in a cheap vinyl-clad house that has very little resale value. Nobody takes pride in a city that lets basic maintenance continually slide. Taking great pride in something creates the right incentives for people to want to be in your city, to set up a diverse set of businesses and to make deep and lasting connections to people and places all around you. This is such a huge divergence from the current cultural norm. But we need to get there because America can literally no longer afford to keep subsidizing crap and ignoring quality. Our quality of life is really starting to suffer financially, socially, physically, etc. Growth for growth's sake no longer cuts it. We've already picked all of the low-hanging-fruit of growth from our society. It's time to build with quality and prepare for the long run instead of only today. It's time to build things like the following, where people love to be and to visit:

A public square in Vienna, Austria

Thoughts on Moving

I've been contemplating moving from my current city of Indianapolis for the last several months. At first, I was looking into and trying to move forward on moving to London, UK. For me it made a lot of sense: I know several people there and some of these people quite well, the company I work for is headquartered there which would provide me the ability to work out of the office when I want to for when I need social interaction, and I've always wanted to try living in Europe. But alas, my company isn't able to sponsor me moving there. So presently that's just not a possibility. Without a proper work visa I can't be there for longer than 3 months.

Now as I contemplate where in the US I'd like to move to, I've noticed several interesting things:

• I'm tired of US culture in many ways
• Both large and small, our cities have a long way to go on creating dense, soft, aesthetically pleasing and livable urban experiences when compared to Europe
• It's really hard to choose one place to move to when I literally can choose anywhere in the US

US culture is so fickle. We're glued to our smart phones even in the presence of other outstanding people. We live in isolated suburbs that take 30+ minutes to get to anything and we wonder why we feel so alone. We are so scared of being professional irrelevant that we don't know how to take any quality time off from our jobs. Even when we have more than 2 weeks of holiday, many Americans still don't use up their base 2 weeks. We are trained to consume things in a temporary manner, dispose of them and then look forward to the new shiny thing. We do this with objects and we do this with people. It's another reason we're so lonely.

Our cities are still car-centric. Even NYC with it's great subway system and dense living which is highly walkable, it still has wide one way streets that feel like crossing interstate highways. Contrast this to many European cities where roads are generally narrow and even in the middle of these, there exist raised islands for pedestrian safety. We just don't quite know how to pay or and implement these basic traits that Europe has gotten right for decades now. Cities need to be designed and retrofitted for pedestrians first - always. Anything else creates what we have today which are more about commercial throughput and efficiency of vehicles rather than productivity and livability of human beings.

For me, too much choice really is a bad thing. I much prefer a smaller curated list of whatever it is I'm trying to choose be it craft beer, food, or the place that I'll call home. The list of possible cities and regions in the US is staggering.

The thought of leaving existing friends is a troubling one to me. Indianapolis is a great place in many ways with many things going for it, but it's primarily the people I know who are why I've remained here for many years. But there are great people everywhere and I want a place that has a highly livable city with incredible nature and outdoor activities to do. Indiana is not that place. I feel like a fish out of water here. I think it's just hard to make such a decision as to uproot and move, especially when the only other time I've done that was when I first came to Indy to attend college. But all great decisions start with some risk and some challenges. Anybody else have thoughts or stories about a large move that you made?