Charles Marohn

Brainerd

Founder and Co-Host at Upzoned

President and Co-Founder at Strong Towns

Host at The Strong Towns Podcast

Books: Strong Towns | Confessions of a Recovering Engineer | (Bestseller) Escaping the Housing Trap

Articles

Why Cities Fail When They Plan Top-Down and Hope Bottom-Up

5 days ago | strongtowns.org | Charles Marohn

A few weeks ago, someone shared a book title on Twitter: "Planning Like Moses with Jacobs in Mind." I haven't read the book so it is possible I am missing something profound, but the very concept suggested in the title struck me as absurd.
What Happens to Your City When the Federal Check Doesn’t Clear?

1 week ago | strongtowns.org | Charles Marohn

For my entire adult life, people have warned that Japan's debt was going to blow up its economy. I remember being a much younger investor thinking that it was an obvious trade — no economy could have a debt-to-GDP ratio that high and not lose control of its bond market. At the time, I was very frustrated at being too poor, and too much of an outsider, to be able to take advantage of this obvious opportunity. How naive I was. And, as it turns out, quite lucky to have avoided that mistake.
When Systems Are Fragile, They Break. Here's What That Looks Like.

2 weeks ago | strongtowns.org | Charles Marohn

What did we think was going to happen? In May 2016, I asked a series of hard questions about an airport water and sewer extension project here in my hometown of Brainerd, Minnesota. What’s our return on investment? What’s the long-term obligation we’re taking on? What does success even look like? These questions went unanswered. More precisely: nobody in the decision-making process was interested in an answer. Not the city council. Not the city staff.
America Should Sprawl? Not If We Want Strong Towns

1 month ago | strongtowns.org | Charles Marohn

There’s been a lot of buzz around Conor Dougherty’s recent New York Times piece, “Why America Should Sprawl.” The article argues that the country’s housing crisis is so severe—and infill development so insufficient—that we need to embrace aggressive outward expansion of our metro regions, what many would call sprawl, to build the millions of homes America needs. It’s a compelling, well-written piece, and it’s struck a chord with a lot of readers.
STRONG TOWNS: The Opposite of ‘Strong’ Isn’t ‘Weak’… It’s ‘Dependent’.

1 month ago | pagosadailypost.com | Charles Marohn

This op-ed originally appeared on StrongTowns.org on April 21, 2025. You don’t have to look far to see that things feel unstable right now. National politics is a mess. State legislatures are swinging wildly from one state to the next. Economic signals are chaotic. Interest rates, federal funding, inflation, labor markets — it all feels like shifting sand. If you’re a local leader, it’s hard not to feel whiplash. But the problem isn’t just that the world is volatile. Volatility is part of life.
STRONG TOWNS: Real Change Happens Locally

1 month ago | pagosadailypost.com | Charles Marohn

This op-ed by Chuck Marohn first appeared on StrongTowns.org on April 17, 2025. Last weekend, I had the privilege of speaking at the New Jersey Bike & Walk Summit — a packed room filled with passionate local leaders, planners, engineers, and advocates working to make their places safer and more human. Before I started, I entirely scrapped the talk I had prepared. The moment demanded something different. There’s a lot of fear right now. I could read it clearly in the room.
Are cities passively defaulting on their debts by not investing in the community?

1 month ago | theapopkavoice.com | Charles Marohn

As a young engineer, I used to sit in city council chambers during budget season, doing my best to help the cities I worked with figure out what to do next. These were communities I cared about, places I wanted to see thrive. But the meetings themselves were often bewildering. People would ask questions that seemed simple—How much debt do we have? What’s in the rainy day fund? Can we afford this project?—and the answers would be vague or nonexistent.
STRONG TOWNS: Economies of Scale Won’t Solve the Housing Crisis

2 months ago | pagosadailypost.com | Charles Marohn

After a lecture I gave last fall in Salt Lake City, a university professor who teaches real estate finance challenged my assertion that financialization was driving housing costs higher. She argued that the best way to lower home prices and improve affordability was to make housing finance more liquid — essentially, to pump more top-down money into the housing sector.
STRONG TOWNS: Evidence of Broken Municipal Governments

2 months ago | pagosadailypost.com | Charles Marohn

For years, I’ve been saying that North American cities are broke. That they owe more than they bring in… that they are functionally insolvent. Some have dismissed this as hyperbole or advocacy rhetoric. But it’s not. It’s the truth. And now, for the first time, we have the data to prove it — and it’s even worse than we thought. Over the past 18 months, with the generous support of a key donor, we’ve been developing a tool that will change how we talk about local government budgets.
NYC’s Congestion Pricing Was Flawed-But Killing It Won’t Fix Traffic

Mar 3, 2025 | strongtowns.org | Charles Marohn

Last week, the Trump administration rescinded federal approval for New York City’s congestion pricing program, a move that left many transportation advocates and urban advocates frustrated. After years of delays, political fights and legal challenges, the first congestion pricing system in the U.S. was just getting started — only to be abruptly shut down by a policy reversal from Washington. If you believe in congestion pricing as a tool to manage traffic (and we do), this decision is infuriating.