John Pattison

If you want walkability, I can now personally recommend Edinburgh. But if you want a fresh vision for what a safe, enjoyable driving experience can be, rent a car in Scotland and go in search of the Great Wee Roads.

What we need—what our towns and cities need—are more people willing to say, “I don’t know,” and, “What do you think?” and, “Let’s figure that out together.”

If you follow those steps, find a group of people, start dreaming together, start educating yourselves, start listening and identifying gaps in the community and assets in the community, then I think you’re at that point where you can actually start thinking seriously about, “Okay, which of these Community Economic Development toolkit strategies do we want to take on first?”

Community Economic Development seeks to build long-term capacity in a community for equitable economic activity. Those are all key. There’s capacity, it’s long term and it’s equitable.

The good news: We can get cleaner commutes right now by building cities that are walkable and bikeable. What if commuting by car or truck wasn’t an absolute necessity for so many people?

One of the early insights of the Strong Towns movement was that the way North American cities have been built since World War II resembles, more than anything, a massive Ponzi scheme.