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Charles Marohn's Blog

A call for a new model
It is tough to look in the mirror, but as Schramm points out, "the practice of city planning has...
May 20 2013 10:16am Charles Marohn
The driving boom is over
The Driving Boom — a six decade long period of steady increases in per-capita driving in the...
May 15 2013 9:38am Charles Marohn
The gatekeepers
A city is an organism, not a machine. While machines need mechanics to watch over and maintain...
Apr 29 2013 8:34am Charles Marohn
To my fellow lab rats
The United States has intertwined two enormous experiments with each other: the auto-oriented...
Apr 22 2013 8:09am Charles Marohn
City as banker and venture capitalist
As we are growing the endowment that is our city, improving its overall wealth and prosperity,...
Apr 8 2013 8:10am Charles Marohn
The local government portfolio for growth
If our cities want to avoid insolvency and financial collapse (see Detroit), they will get out of...
Apr 1 2013 9:18am Charles Marohn
Three core understandings
Public officials at the local level rarely, if ever, even bother to measure whether or not...
Mar 25 2013 4:54pm Charles Marohn
It takes money to make money?
The concept of investing (other people's) money in order to make money, especially when pushed by...
Mar 18 2013 7:36am Charles Marohn
Walkable streets II: The documenting
Last week, I mentioned that 35-40kph (25mph) moves the most traffic. Readers took me to task,...
Mar 18 2013 7:23am Charles Marohn
The STROAD
If we want to build places that are financially productive, we need to identify and eliminate...
Mar 4 2013 12:01pm Charles Marohn
Orderly but dumb
In a contracting economy, the only hope is to transform "orderly but dumb" into "chaotic but smart."
Feb 18 2013 10:20am Charles Marohn
Kansas City, take 2
Nothing more than a couple of shout outs for today with the promise to catch up with you later in...
Feb 11 2013 8:06am Charles Marohn
How about schools on safe routes?
A program to build Schools on Safe Routes would not only be more intelligent, it would be more...
Feb 4 2013 8:40am Charles Marohn
Raining on the suburban housing recovery parade
Many want to believe that housing is staging a comeback. This is a logical wish since so much of...
Jan 28 2013 11:14am Charles Marohn
Pensions: The canary in our coal mine
Understanding the numbers behind the pension crisis will help us more completely grasp the depth...
Jan 22 2013 12:37pm Charles Marohn
It's so much more than density
The notion that we can solve the problems that we face in our cities by simply increasing the...
Jan 14 2013 1:45pm Charles Marohn
The Next Generation DOT
While on an individual level it is clear that today's transportation agencies are filled with...
Jan 4 2013 1:43pm Charles Marohn
The little fellers
We've tilted the playing field so far in this country that we've wiped out an entire class of...
Dec 3 2012 11:00am Charles Marohn
What is the federal role?
All things being equal, I would rather not have a federal transportation bill. Ask yourself why...
Nov 20 2012 8:19am Charles Marohn
High fructose corn syrup
Building a strong town is ultimately about more than just the finance of our places. While that is...
Nov 5 2012 10:55am Charles Marohn
Is the jig up?
In the boom years, cities got very lazy with the assessment process, allowing the general...
Oct 29 2012 8:50am Charles Marohn
Investment ready places
Countless people are working today to solve the complex problems we face in America. Few are as...
Oct 15 2012 9:10am Charles Marohn
The incoherence of place and politics
This past weekend I came across a video of a fellow named Stanley Kurtz. I had recently heard...
Oct 8 2012 11:11am Charles Marohn
A world without projections
We don't need better projections to build a nation of Strong Towns. All we need is a clear...
Oct 1 2012 10:38am Charles Marohn
Not efficient, but orderly
We design for the peak hour or two and then, for the rest of the day, all of that capacity goes to...
Sep 24 2012 9:05am Charles Marohn
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