This all strikes me as a very “Strong Towns” kind of conversation. They’re basically the top urbanist/YIMBY-adjacent organization talking about dis-invested small towns and broke exurbs. Building a treehouse in a vacant lot or putting out public benches epitomize Strong Towns style thinking. Another classic Strong Towns line is, that there is no higher ROI investment a municipality can make than planting street trees.
The founder grew up and still lives in a small town in Minnesota, they do a lot to highlight the urbanist conversation outside of the disproportionately-influential NYC/SF/DC/Boston media bubble.
I think the California YIMBY approach of the state taking control is 100% the right approach for the catastrophic housing shortage and insatiable demand for living in California. But Strong Towns is probably giving much better prescriptions for Michigan, Georgia, or New Mexico. And even in California, there's a place for more Strong Towns-style thinking.
yeah I think all 3 of us here liked the book & would agree top-down approach is probably the only way to deal with CA's housing crisis! much more of a "yes and" conversation than a true critique
Hi, some feedback on this article, I found it hard to read due to me not knowing any of the people (Clara, Kelsey, Jasmine, Ezra, Derek) mentioned (and often only mentioned by first name). I’m not sure who the target audience for this was, but I felt like it wasn’t me (I don’t feel like this with other Asterisk articles).
An introduction of all the participants of the conversation would have been great!
This all strikes me as a very “Strong Towns” kind of conversation. They’re basically the top urbanist/YIMBY-adjacent organization talking about dis-invested small towns and broke exurbs. Building a treehouse in a vacant lot or putting out public benches epitomize Strong Towns style thinking. Another classic Strong Towns line is, that there is no higher ROI investment a municipality can make than planting street trees.
The founder grew up and still lives in a small town in Minnesota, they do a lot to highlight the urbanist conversation outside of the disproportionately-influential NYC/SF/DC/Boston media bubble.
I think the California YIMBY approach of the state taking control is 100% the right approach for the catastrophic housing shortage and insatiable demand for living in California. But Strong Towns is probably giving much better prescriptions for Michigan, Georgia, or New Mexico. And even in California, there's a place for more Strong Towns-style thinking.
yeah I think all 3 of us here liked the book & would agree top-down approach is probably the only way to deal with CA's housing crisis! much more of a "yes and" conversation than a true critique
Hi, some feedback on this article, I found it hard to read due to me not knowing any of the people (Clara, Kelsey, Jasmine, Ezra, Derek) mentioned (and often only mentioned by first name). I’m not sure who the target audience for this was, but I felt like it wasn’t me (I don’t feel like this with other Asterisk articles).
An introduction of all the participants of the conversation would have been great!