Charles Marohn

What form should reparations take? How much should they be? Who should pay them? Who should receive them? How should that transfer be made? What will happen if this is done? Would it really help anyone?

In this fascinating and wide-ranging discussion, Chuck and Jim look at the impact of the crisis on the automotive and airline industries, our food systems, and more.

Yet, as I said, I am not feeling that helpless form of resignation. You shouldn’t either. And if you’re looking for some inspiration and have some free time in quarantine, pick up a book I hadn’t read in 2008 called A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit. In it, she details the astounding things people do to help each other in times of extreme distress.

My skepticism aside, my goal here is not to convince the passionate supporters of endless federal money printing that this is a bad idea – you’ve got your thing and you really believe it and I don’t want to quarrel over it in this piece – but to point out to you, and especially those sympathetic to the ends if not the means of what you advocate for, that Modern Monetary Theory is not going to solve the problems we are trying to address at Strong Towns.

My approach, as always, is to try and understand the way past societies prospered despite being comprised of flawed humans—people with all the same shortcomings we have today. When we do that, one thing we quickly realize is that the Traditional Development approach – the way we built cities for thousands of years prior to the past century– was a good party, while our modern approach, what we call the Suburban Experiment, is a really bad party.

Transportation investments can create jobs, growth and opportunity in the short term while at the same time not only paying for themselves but making our cities, and our nation, financially stronger in the process. America needs a transportation revolution. Here is how we propose that be done.