Strong Towns, Weak Arguments

The substance is more important than the form

A few weeks ago this piece by progressive urbanist Allison Lirish Dean, in Current Affairs, made the Twitter rounds: “The Strong Towns Movement is Simply Right-Libertarianism Dressed in Progressive Garb.”

The piece and the reactions are interesting. Dean’s main critique of the Strong Towns philosophy is its focus on financial productivity and its characterization of suburbia as a sort of government-backed invention:

A deeper look at Strong Towns reveals that some of its key proposals are simply right-libertarianism dressed up in progressive garb. These proposals ultimately reinforce harmful ideas about government and much-needed comprehensive urban planning and deny the importance of guaranteeing public goods and services for all….

The evils of parking minimum mandates and postwar suburban sprawl stem from “socialism” and “incredible levels of centralized coordination.” Such narratives evoke Ronald Reagan’s 1986 quip about the nine most terrifying words in the English language—“I’m from the government and I’m here to help”—and encourage pessimism about the potential for public action to yield benefits. 

Strong Towns depoliticizes money, asking that we simply #DoTheMath when assessing an infrastructure investment’s viability. Government solvency is important, and as Strong Towns’ spotlight on the growth Ponzi scheme shows, we’re wasting scarce resources. Strong Towns is correct that we’ve often invested in the wrong things (like parking lots and stroads) at the expense of maintaining our most productive existing infrastructure. But we also need big investment in the right things.

These critiques are fine. Although money does represent a real, hard constraint that progressives sometimes sidestep. And arguing that we need financial productivity means arguing for the creation of more private wealth—sure, call that right-libertarian—which can then be taxed.

Strong Towns basically is saying “let’s raise more tax revenue.” But it couches that argument in a way that a libertarian-ish reader will nod along and, by the end, hardly realize what he has done. This is the canniness of Strong Towns, and why it’s such a unique and important voice in a space where progressive rhetoric and predispositions are the norm.

And that brings me to Dean’s argument that Strong Towns is one thing disguised as something else. In a way it is—but in the exact opposite way from what she perceives.

One guy on Twitter characterized her argument this way, and while this is simplistic, it is not inaccurate: “The article is entirely: this is bad because a guy doesn’t use the meaningless value words I cherish, even though I agree with almost all of what he does. The critiques are almost entirely qualitative rather than substantive.”

I wrote about this aspect of Strong Towns when I reviewed Charles Marohn’s most recent book, on traffic engineering. I argued—contra Dean and other left-leaning detractors—that it would be more accurate to see Strong Towns as putting forth fundamentally progressive arguments in a conservative-libertarian form. I wrote, on the issue of race, on which Strong Towns is often critiqued for being insufficiently conscious or progressive:

Marohn is sometimes criticized for speaking relatively little about race. It is true that he seems to carefully eschew language that could be characterized, these days, as “woke.” But it is impossible to argue that he does not understand and care deeply about the racial and class inequalities magnified by America’s broken transportation system….

The fact that Marohn never uses trendy “left-wing” language does not detract from his conclusions on matters regarding race. Rather, it magnifies them, making plain to any reader that even when you strip out the jargon, the heartbreaking injustices and inequalities that run through everything in America are not imaginary or ideological. They were not conjured up in coastal newsrooms or Ivy League academic departments. They are real; they are there. Marohn makes it far easier for those of a centrist or right-leaning persuasion to see this, and he forces such readers to reckon with it. He does not allow them to dismiss any of it on the basis of “sounding left-wing.”

This, in my view, makes Strong Towns incredibly unique and powerful. It simply doesn’t fit, or appear to fit, into any preconceived political ideology. By very carefully, seemingly purposely, refusing to use any of the trendy terminology on these matters, Marohn conceals, and persuades, in a way that almost nobody else does. I think a lot of progressives underestimate how allergic conservatives are to certain words and certain ideological poses. So make that rhetorical concession. Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.

But Dean doesn’t like the idea of separating the outward form of progressivism from its inward substance. She writes:

Strong Towns asks us to tell our leaders that we’re not going to build another multi-lane stroad to Walmart because doing so would be financially reckless. This is a real political statement because there are entrenched interests invested in this way of doing things.

And yet, Strong Towns promotes itself as politically agnostic.

That “and yet” is tenuous or negative. I don’t know how to interpret this any other way than as an argument that rhetorical framings are more important than the ends those framings are designed to achieve. Politics is practical. All successful movements find a way to market their ideas to different audiences, not by lying, but by emphasizing different elements of the same underlying philosophy. Appearing apolitical can be canny politics.

Dean knocks Strong Towns downplaying the history of racism in real estate, or eschewing the idea of big government investment like the Green New Deal. But if it’s true—and it may be true—that emphasizing these things immediately makes half the country stop listening to everything else you have to say, what are you supposed to do? Say the right words and get stymied?

I also find this interesting:

As an example, he [Marohn] described how, in Santa Ana, California, you might find a Latino family consisting of two parents, two kids, two cousins, an uncle, and a grandma living in a “traditional” arrangement under one roof as a strategy to pool resources and build wealth. 

But is this a “traditional” family structure or eight people crammed into a two-bedroom house out of economic desperation?

Look—it may very well be the case that when people have enough money to buy their own detached house and one or two cars, they just do. Or, more broadly, that much of what we call “traditional urbanism” is simply an artifact of having been comparatively poor at the time we built it. There may actually be reasons, far beyond land use per se, for which we no longer build the way we did in the 19th century. That’s a possibility beyond politics or policy, and it’s one that few urbanists think about.

But you’ll also find many people who wish it were easier to live multigenerationally in America. Some of these people are immigrants who are unaccustomed to America’s isolated single-family housing. Some are people who could use a grandparent for childcare or who want to keep one out of a retirement home. In fact, many progressives make exactly this point in critiquing the nuclear family. But then praising the multigenerational family is some kind of condescension to poor immigrants?

I understand Dean’s points, but I think she’s made a bit of an error here that frankly all of us make. We see an argument directed at a certain audience, and conflate that argument with the whole thing. The right-wing version of this is when a progressive urbanist talks about cities as climate policy, which, whether or not it’s true, is a way of appealing to one progressive concern and trying to elevate it over NIMBYism. “You guys may not want more housing, but you know, more housing in existing communities is good for the environment!”

The problem is that then climate change skeptics hear this and think, “So that’s what this ‘urbanism’ stuff is all about!” But it isn’t. It’s about everything. It’s about global warming and about families and about social justice and about traditional settlement patterns and more.

Maybe because I’m Catholic I’ve got a lot of practice, but everyone should try: Look beyond the form you see, and see the substance underneath.

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Related Reading:

Me Or Your Own Eyes

No Harm, No Foul?

Don’t Shoot the Message

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