This op-ed originally appeared on StrongTowns.org on February 8, 2021.
In the early years of Strong Towns, I used to analyze specific projects and development patterns, breaking down in simple prose all the ways in which they were bankrupting a city.
It was powerful stuff, but also rather caustic. I was angry, with a feeling of helplessness and defeat. Writing was the productive outlet for my frustrations, loneliness, and depression.
Today, I have you, an audience of millions and a movement with thousands of members, many of them out there doing amazing things. I don’t feel alone, and the positive momentum we are creating together has allowed my frustrations to subside and be replaced with the optimism that comes with real progress.
There is so much to do, but we are making progress.
So, when people forward me articles about projects that in the past I would have done a deep dive on, ripping them to shreds with the hopes that any decent person pondering such a proposal would feel deep shame for doing so, I now almost always let them pass. In fact, at this point it feels a little mean to write them, like I’m punching down.
Even so, this story from Mauldin, South Carolina — a city of 25,000 outside of Greenville — about a new development called “City Center” is prompting me to make an exception, if only for this one line from the news report:
Plans to put the property to use have been underway in some form or another since the city voted to begin working to create a formal downtown area in 2009.
Twelve years. More than any other thing, that is what I want you to focus on.
I am currently reading Lucius Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life. It is profound and affirming. The thrust of the narrative is that time is the thing we all have that we all spend equally. I will spend the next hour writing this column, while you will (hopefully) spend the next three minutes reading it. Regardless of whether either of us is wealthy or destitute, old or young, part of a favored class or a disenfranchised population, our expenditure of that time is measured the same.
And our lives are a set amount of time. Once an interval has passed, it cannot be recaptured. There is no making up for lost time. We can compensate for time we consider lost, but we can’t make it up. Whatever our allotment is, that is all we have. The final hour will come like a thief in the night.
From Seneca:
In guarding their fortune men are often close-fisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal.
Twelve years. If City Center was important to the city of Mauldin—if establishing a downtown was important, along with all the tax revenue they claim to be getting—they shouldn’t just account for their effort in terms of dollars. They also need to account for it in terms of time.
“In guarding their fortune, men are often close-fisted….” The newspaper reports — in a bit of silly propaganda typical of those lacking curiosity or perhaps themselves committed to a narrative — that City Center comes at “no cost” to taxpayers. This is not true, obviously, because the article then goes on to describe how tax revenue will be reclassified and then redirected to support the project. Yet, it is important enough to the close-fisted of Mauldin to report on it, to answer the question of how this formal downtown will impact their fortune.
Yet, the article has nothing more than a passing mention of the waste of time. In wasting time, Mauldin shows “themselves most prodigal.” There isn’t even an excuse. The site has sat there, underperforming for over a decade, and it is celebrated that now something has been accomplished to remedy that. I assume there is no anxiety over it in the news because there is no meaningful anxiety over it in the community.
This is the tyranny we have created for ourselves with the Suburban Experiment, the process we use to develop our places all at once, in large blocks, to a finished state. When we at Strong Towns talk about the need to work incrementally, we are pushing back against big projects — yes — but we are also fighting against the waste of human capital and ingenuity that goes along with idling in place.
More from Seneca:
The greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends upon the morrow and wastes to-day.
Let’s go over the numbers. Oh yeah, there are none, and I don’t think it is a stretch to believe that nobody has bothered to run them. Like many such projects, there seems to be an article of faith — along with antiquated thinking about the real value of free infrastructure — that translates into statements like this (quoting from the article):
While it’s true that developers ultimately get reimbursed by taxpayers for their infrastructure investments, Mauldin Mayor Terry Merritt stressed that these infrastructure investments never would have happened in the first place without these incentives—and neither would the increased money flowing into the city as a result of development.
Pick a value for the property today, whatever you think it might be worth. It’s already developed, although I really can’t tell exactly what it is. Assume that the City Center project doubles that value, an assumption that I think is generous given the history of such projects. Since the city of Mauldin has no sales tax or hospitality tax, the only “increased money flowing into the city” will have to come from an increase in property taxes. So, that is the base case: Twelve years of stagnation and then a doubling of value.
Now consider an incremental approach, one where we used the Strong Towns Approach to Public Investment and worked throughout the entire neighborhood to gradually improve property values. What rate of annual increase in property value would need to happen if the property were to double in value over those twelve years? The answer: 6%.
One option is to sit around and wait for 12 years for all the pieces of a transformative project to come together, then do that project in the hopes that—once all the infrastructure subsidy is retired—more revenue starts coming into the city. The other option is to shoot for a maintenance and incremental investment strategy that grows property values throughout the entire neighborhood by 6% a year for those 12 years.
Neglecting the increased tax base throughout the neighborhood and just focusing on the City Center property, the incremental strategy is going to bring in 35% more tax revenue over those twelve years. Plus the revenue from the appreciation of other properties. Plus it does not require an infrastructure subsidy scheme.
This is the dollar cost of wasting 12 years.
The total cost must also measure the lost opportunity, suppressed innovation, and added risk. Yes, the incremental approach is messier—testing out the strategy with a tent or a bunch of food trucks is not as orderly and polished as the City Center proposal—but it could have been done 12 years ago. Instead of an outside developer, it could have been local entrepreneurs leading the way. Instead of a big risk that creating a new downtown next to a roofing supply store and some storage sheds is not going to work, the idea could have been tested and refined over the last dozen years at relatively low cost.
Yes, in some ways that is more difficult. In some ways the Strong Towns approach is messier. It might be easier to sit back and wait, comfortable with the knowledge that someday the big project will happen. That’s not my version of leadership. In fact, that is my definition of failure.
City Center is neither part of a real city nor the center of anything. You don’t build a “formal downtown” with a strip mall design fronted by a large parking lot. There is no neighborhood connected to this so-called “center” so the idea that this represents anything more than a novelty project is silly. Oh, and your tax-to-fee conversion is a subsidy that is costing taxpayers real dollars, although I’m willing to believe that you believe what you are saying. That makes you ignorant, not evil.
Ignorance can be cured. Read some Seneca. Get a sense of urgency. Then stop wasting time, and start building a Strong Town.
Charles Marohn is a Professional Engineer (PE) and a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP). He’s the Founder and President of StrongTowns.org . He was named one of the 10 Most Influential Urbanists of all time by Planetizen in 2017.