This Ponzi Scheme Might END Suburban Prosperity

The Growth Ponzi Scheme, also called the "Municipal Ponzi Scheme," is a core Strong Towns insight describing the financial characteristics of post-war North American growth patterns.In the Growth Ponzi Scheme, municipalities receive the modest near-term financial benefits from new development in exchange for the larger long-term financial commitments of providing ongoing service and maintenance.

The Growth Ponzi Scheme is not nefarious; there is not a specific individual or group that has created it for their own benefit. It has emerged from a broad cultural consensus about economic growth, development patterns, and debt. So what can you do?

00:00 OG Ponzi Scheme
01:18 The Growth Ponzi Scheme
02:21 Reasonable Pushback
03:47 Mr. Beast Analogy
05:57 What Now?
08:30 Where Do YOU Start?

[ziqi]

I honestly believe that if denser housing options in America were built with more soundproof walls, floors, and ceilings, Americans wouldn’t be afraid of townhomes, apartments, and duplexes. Whenever I was abroad, I never heard a peep from the surrounding neighbors in any of the hotels, hostels, or apartments I stayed at. In America, hotels and apartments alike have hollow walls that allow me to hear all kinds of unnecessary crap like stomping, arguments, etc. This lack of proper soundproofing is a form of privacy invasion and is absolutely detrimental to mental health over the long term. I honestly believe this is the main reason why middle and upper middle class Americans avoid denser housing options like the plague.

We need to modify our building codes to be more soundproof so developers aren’t skimping on those costs.

[sobbski]

Nimbys are gonna be shook when their home prices crash because their city stops fixing the infrastructure in their suburb

[LiquorWithJazz]

"Everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance." Kurt Vonnegut

[derekadams]

So proud of my small town in Tennessee. We just adopted a new Zoning Ordinance that enables us to build a brand new downtown district!

[wednesdayschild]

It is the end stage of suburban sprawl. Malls are dying. The internet dealt the death blow. 20 years ago, I moved to a smaller, more expensive house near mainstreet. I live in a mixed use neighborhood. I took the chance. Our neighborhood is working on replacing fences.

[tristanridley]

The worst part of our car-based lives and homes may be the fact that they completely remove normal contact with neighbours. It's such a specific and conspicuous thing to try to start a conversation like that in most places I've lived.

[kfcnyancat]

It might be the fact that I grew up with car dependency and the death of small business in America causing like 60% of my problems, but I don't get why people think productive downtowns are unexciting.

[WheelcraftBicycles]

Ever since becoming a small business owner 2 years ago I have been motivated to step my scrapy urbanism game up. Thanks Strongtowns for all the good info.

[tjosi-]

To add, the sprawl of suburban layouts requires more distance for utilities, more materials, more cost to repairs for those utilities or roadways. Just financially unsustainable and just requires so much tax revenue commitment

[the_decde]

It certainly does feel like a lot of cities are going bankrupt, maybe this is why our roads suck so much despite everyone complaining about it - they're too expensive

[Playingwithproxies]

Imagine a world where we charged each suburb house owner taxes to pay for all upkeep necessary for that suburb on top of all the other services that area uses.

[MDAdams]

Mix used is what built this country My grandfather built his shop below his home(1929) his children had stay-at-home parents and he could be open anytime by walking downstairs. The children learned customer service from a young age and never "had nothing to do" Then for some reason this was outlawed hence the decline(and Ponzi scheme) I tried (hard) to find a property grandfathered in for my shop BUT all the owners new what they had eventually I found a shop a block away from a home. Still not the same

[screenarts]

Here they don't care about cost. The high school has a 200k budget for plays. It class they worry about, they'd rather keep the poors out, drive them an hour or so into work at their industrys. Studio apartments were illegal here until the state forced them to allow them. What they've done is build the city with the amenities, restaurants, shopping, entertainment, jobs, then lock in their property taxes and quit building then pull up the drawbridge and watch the property values skyrocket. They refuse to build anything, so a 200k home 20 years ago is 1m today and people are lined up to buy them. It's not a land issue they have huge "green spaces" surrounding the city to prevent growth. It's about class...

[alsalzeri]

Mississauga Ontario can be an interesting example to follow. They have sprawled out as much as they can and have run out of room last year, the ponzi is over. Now they are trying to increase density to survive.

[TheRuralUrbanist]

I can see the inversion of this in cities that didn't become massive suburbs. They are not constantly worried about the finances of the town govt., because the dense downtown pays for its own services and provides what is needed by residents. Portsmouth, NH is a great example of this.

[zacharyt.]

5:20 "The scary duplex or townhomes that everyone is afraid will ruin the character of their neighborhood..."

Ya I remember the first home I grew up in was a townhouse. That was back in the early 2000s and it was the way that my blue-collar dad and my stay-at-home mom were able to not just make ends meet, but also afford for us to go out to decent dinners, a day out in the city, or go on a summer vacation every other year or so.

[MisterVercetti]

The only thing that's going to convince people to leave the suburbs and move into more dense urban areas is the cost of living in the former outpacing the latter. As long as cities continue to be more expensive than the suburbs, urban living is still going to be considered a luxury reserved solely for the elite.

[jackuzi]

It's important that zoning not restrict areas to one specific use. For example, it seems like many malls and office parks are on their way out, economically speaking. These are usually located in places with convenient access, and significant resources were invested in building them. If there's market demand to redevelop them into apartments, zoning laws shouldn't stand in the way.

[torquetrain]

Transportation is a non partisan issue, but car centricism is absolutely the most oppressive isolated insane dictatorial anti social wasteful disaster. It's a crime against humanity .

[halleradam]

The grift of NIMBYs is to scream about neighborhood character whilst taking more than they contribute, all whilst lying to selves that it’s justified since they “were here first”.