Curbside Chat – October 2nd

Date: Tuesday October 2nd, 2012
Time: 7:00 PM

Location:
Willistead Manor
1899 Niagara Street
Windsor, Ontario

More info: http://www.strongtowns.org/

A free event brought to you by the St. Clair Region Society of Architects & The Olde Walkerville Residents Association.

The American (and Canadian) approach to growth is causing economic stagnation and decline along with land use practices that force a dependency on public subsidies. The inefficiencies of the current approach have left American (and Canadian) towns financially insolvent, unable to pay even the maintenance costs of their basic infrastructure. A new approach that accounts for the full cost of growth is needed to make our towns strong again.

The Strong Towns approach ultimately requires a reorientation of emphasis and a renewed understanding of what it takes to build a town or a neighborhood.

The current approach to growth emphasizes investments in new infrastructure to serve or induce new development. This approach uses public dollars inefficiently, destructively subsidizes one type of development over another and leaves massive maintenance liabilities to future generations.

A Strong Town approach emphasizes obtaining a higher return on existing infrastructure investments. We can no longer simply disregard old investments in favor of new, but instead we need to focus on making better use of that which we are already committed to publicly maintain.