Dense downtown development is the key to having strong towns in the 21st century, keynoter Charles Marohn told 833 attendees at the big LERN conference in Orlando.
The experiment in suburban sprawl has failed, he said. He noted that a big box store actually brings in less tax dollars than a block of small shops and stores.
Marohn said dense downtown development has actually been proven to work for communities over the last three thousand years.
Dense downtown development has these features:
*Buildings two or more stories high
*Pedestrian sidewalks and bicycle lanes
*Mixed use zoning with shops and stores on the first floor level and apartments on higher floors.
*Smaller shops and stores, more locally owned.
*Communities walkable.
He says communities can get greater value, tax base and be financially sustainable by filling in the gaps in downtown areas with more buildings.
He said suburban sprawl cannot be financially sustained by governments. Governments are burdened with debt, and the private sector cannot be taxed high enough to support suburban sprawl. He says suburban sprawl has been funded by constantly building new developments, but those developments now need to be maintained and the tax base cannot support that maintenance. “Maintaining suburbs is done by expanding suburbs,” he said.
Dense downtown development is also more environmentally sustainable than suburbs. His message resonated with the attendees, especially Gen Y participants. Gen Y is recreating dense downtown developments across Canada and the United States.
Photo: The speaker’s hometown of Brainerd, Minnesota, some 100 years ago when it had a dense downtown development rather than the suburban sprawl of today.
