ASTA: Chuck Marohn re. Chester, PA, Tax Increment Financing, Incremental Change, Public Consultation, etc. (Apr 23, 2025)

This week’s Ask Strong Towns Anything was a rich, engaging conversation with Chuck Marohn and our Strong Towns team, featuring real questions from movement members across North America. Thank you to everyone who showed up, asked hard questions, and joined us in thinking through the tough realities and real opportunities facing our communities.

🎥 Coming Up Next: Travel With Us — Exploring Towns Across North America
Don’t miss our next live event with Chuck Marohn:
👉 Travel With Us — Exploring Towns Across North America
We’ll be taking a visual journey through towns that have shaped—and been shaped by—the Strong Towns approach. Join us next week and bring your curiosity!

Questions We Covered

Two standout questions that sparked in-depth discussion:

🏗️ “Hey Chuck! How much of the high cost of the suburban experiment do you think can be chalked up to the American tendency to overpay for public investment? If we paid as little per mile to build streets as France does, could we afford to maintain suburbia?”

— Alex M.

Chuck unpacked why the problem runs deeper than just cost per mile. While overpaying is a symptom, the root issue lies in the structure of the suburban experiment itself—low-return investments, spread thin, and lacking long-term resiliency.

🏚️ “What can I do to affect change when my city has filed for bankruptcy?” (Chester, PA)

— Tyler R.

This question led into a heartfelt exploration of Chester, Pennsylvania, a city whose struggles are emblematic of how damaging top-down infrastructure decisions and fiscal mismanagement can be. Chuck spoke directly to how local, incremental efforts still matter, even in the face of structural decline and legal bankruptcy—especially in towns like Chester that have endured so much harm.

Dig Deeper: Articles Referenced

These articles came up throughout the conversation, offering context and deeper insights:

📷 Chester, PA: A Cautionary Tale

Chuck’s reflections on Chester’s tragic transformation reveal how misguided “improvements” can ruin a great city:

• PennDOT Fiddles — A powerful mix of historic photos and brutal modern reality.

• Not Efficient, But Orderly — How order, rather than actual productivity, has come to dominate our infrastructure goals.

🧭 Local Decision-Making in an Age of Top-Down Reform

As the book Abundance explores reinventing systems from above, Strong Towns continues to stress localism, subsidiarity, and citizen agency:

• Subsidiarity — Empowering local people to make decisions that impact them.

• The Neighbors Dilemma — Why hyper-local organizing is both messy and essential.

• The Mailbox and Andrés Duany — Public participation that actually works.

• Most Public Engagement is Worse Than Worthless — A bold critique of tokenistic engagement.

💰 Post-Recording Reflection: Financial Realities

After we turned off the recording, Chuck brought up a must-read piece for anyone thinking about city finance:

• Bond Ratings Are for Investors, Not Taxpayers — A crucial insight into who financial systems actually serve (hint: it’s not always your neighbors).

Ready to Go Deeper? Join Us.

If events like this inspire you, if these questions echo your own, and if you believe we can do better—become a Strong Towns member.

Your membership fuels conversations like these, strengthens our reach, and empowers communities to shift from decline to resilience.

👉 Become a member today

Let’s make change, block by block, together.