Charles Marohn is the founder and president of Strong Towns. With decades of experience as a land use planner and civil engineer, Marohn is on a mission to help cities and towns become stronger and more prosperous through classic, traditional town planning. He’s the bestselling author of
Most 15-minute-city advocates live in a bubble: childless, affluent, gentrified urban cores or quiet campuses. Their “diversity” is polite, high-income professionals who share their values.They’ve never dealt with roosters at 4 a.m., goats eating the neighbor’s garden, week-long parties with 120 dB music, or a chop shop running behind the duplex next door. So they genuinely believe packing everyone into walkable density creates charming vibrancy. The rest of us know it just removes the one thing keeping the peace: distance.They’re not wrong about car dependency. They’re just sheltered about human beings. People self segregate for a reason.
15 minute cities is completely different from new urbanism. 15 minute city is a totalitarian control mechanism to keep you confined because of a perceived lack of resources and to control the population. New Urbanism is exactly the opposite. It places no such limits on anyone it simply states that the best models for villages and towns are the time tested models of yesteryear and that we should return to that model as much as possible. Walkable towns, green spaces, people over cars, good life, not commuting.
WRONG. ITalians had tons of Children and they had 15 minute cities since antiquity. People have to learn to act like citizens and not selfish consumers. There are two different problems here. Go look at what the energy grid looks like. There is going to be no choice. Malls are going away, the way we do retail just cannot continue. These people better learn to get along with their neighbors or they won't fit into the new world.
Italian hill towns and old neighborhoods worked for a thousand years because the people inside the walls were almost genetically identical: same religion, same language, same holidays, same views on family honor, noise, animals, marriage, and child-rearing. When everyone already agrees on 99 % of life’s big questions, density feels like community. Lebanon in the 1960s and Yugoslavia under Tito looked exactly like that dream on the surface: Christians, Muslims, and Jews (or Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks) sharing the same walkable streets, cafés, and apartment blocks. Everyone swore the old hatreds were gone.Then the glue dissolved (demographics in Lebanon, dictatorship and debt in Yugoslavia), and the supposedly “cured” cultural incompatibilities exploded. Within a few years, neighbors who’d shared baklava or rakija were shelling each other’s apartments and ethnically cleansing the same six-block radius that used to be praised as a multicultural paradise. Beirut and Sarajevo went from urbanist poster children to war zones literally overnight. Shared values make density heavenly.
Unbridgeable differences make it hell, and no amount of corner cafés or bike lanes fixes the second case.That’s the part the “just be better neighbors” crowd never grapples with: Italy’s success came from extreme sameness, not from superior urban design or better manners. When you don’t have that sameness, preaching “learn to act Italian” is as realistic as telling cats and dogs to start acting like a married couple.
This is a ridiculous comment. America had a "15 minute" city until ww2. IT worked and btw there's no freaking choice because the power grid is going to change. Right this minute, there are 60-year-old people living in suburban sprawl. One person in a mansion, that's death right there. This has nothing to do with Yugoslavia. America was always about the POLIS, your state your city. We are citizens not consumers or subjects or children in need of dictators. Hide and watch because you are about to see the biggest EVICTION ever. You also know nothing about Italy NOTHING. They had an 800 year civil war between the Ghelf and the Ghibellines. It wasn't even a country until 1861.
Anna, you're right that pre-WWII American cities like New York or Boston were walkable "polises"—dense, mixed-use neighborhoods where you could grab a coffee, work, and school within 15 minutes on foot or trolley. They hummed because of shared cultural norms: Protestant/Catholic immigrants from Europe who, despite accents, agreed on basics like noise curfews, family roles, and public space etiquette. No overflow corrals in your alley or 2 a.m. parties as "community building." That sameness let density feel like citizenship, not confinement.The Guelphs vs. Ghibellines? Spot-on—they tore Italy apart for centuries (peaking 13th–14th, fading by 1529). But notice: they were still all Catholic Italians, fighting over pope vs. emperor, not Sharia vs. secularism or clan honor vs. individualism. It was a family feud within a shared worldview—brutal, but reconcilable because the "big questions" (God, land, blood) had common answers. Modern multiculturalism imports answers from 150 cultures at once, with no time for that convergence. Italy's 1861 unification came after those fractures healed through shared faith and blood, not before. On the grid: Yeah, it's buckling—NERC warns blackouts could spike 100x by 2030 from retiring coal/gas (12 GW in 2025 alone), surging demand (EVs, data centers, heat domes), and transmission delays. Suburbs amplify it: sprawling lines to empty McMansions guzzle resources, and one 60-year-old solo in a 4,000 sq ft house is indeed inefficient. But "no choice" except forced density? Only if we stick to intermittent renewables. Go nuclear—like France (70% nuclear, rock-solid grid, cheap power at €0.20/kWh)—and sprawl stays viable. No need to evict boomers or cram rivals into six-block hells. Abundant, dispatchable energy buys the distance that keeps incompatible folks civil. Yugoslavia/Lebanon aren't "ridiculous"—they're warnings: Tito's police state and Beirut's oil boom papered over divides until economics cracked it open. America's "polis" worked when values aligned; today's "biggest eviction" risks the same if we ignore that. Let's fix the grid with tech that preserves choice, not edicts that pretend cats and dogs can co-parent. What nuclear build-out do you see working here?
I have three kids(some by marriage) that are all in energy and working in AI and the new energy grid. Nuclear energy won't keep sprawl going. The kids show me what the power grid is going to look like. The USA cannot be an outlier. Gas is getting more and more expensive around the world while more is being pumped. That's because in other parts of the world they are already moving away from gas very quickly. There simply isn't the money to make highways for 3 60 year olds living in a mcmansion. We don't need the council for the new Urbanism. There are strings of cars day and night and there is no money to fix the roads. Immigrant communities didn't get along. Didn't you ever watch gangs of New York? What I mean by eviction: immigration is already going away. Other countries want to keep their people. STuffing more people in, isn't going to work. https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=moving+to+a+new+power+grid&mid=C7FABAE39A9723E9C155C7FABAE39A9723E9C155&FORM=VIRE
Oh I LOVE this comment. This comment is made by a person who cannot accept reality. It's classic shoot the messenger. I see it daily in Trump Derangement syndrome. You can get rid of me and Donald Trump and everyone that you don't like but change is coming whether you like it or not. Take it up with God or the Universe. Maybe scream at the sky. Did you know hunter gatherers tried to kill agriculturalists. It didn't work! Agriculture came anyway. The entire world is moving away from gas power. The USA is going too. The power grid doesn't work with sprawl. That's just a damn fact.
Small govt libertarian here. I'd tell people the big sprawl was built largely by govt program/incentives. The little Normal Rockwell towns that everybody wants (or even great cities like NY or SF) were built by a much more frugal society w/ less govt. intervention. Today, those are zoned out.
Listening to JHK and CM reminds me of a simpler time enjoying the banter with the OG Duncan Crary and the Deer Ticks. As we stare into the abyss, I can barely make out a small village I'd like to crash land into. CHEERS and HAPPY HOLIDAYS
Agreed. I started listening to the podcast about 4 podcasts in. I had just read Geography of Nowhere when I discovered it. I don't listen much anymore, but I check in every once in a while for new urbanist content. There's a whole new generation of new urbanist content creators out there now, like Chuck. JHK was one of the OGs though.
This is interesting. This is a real interview as Jim asks some hard questions and the guest does his best to answer them. Lot of knowledge being disseminated here. As far as urban sprawl goes in the Hartford area it continues unabated; in its latest manifestation the State has nullified local zoning laws and developers from all over the US have moved in to build high density housing on the remaining farmland and in small towns & villages. The last of the tillable land is disappearing. The people moving into these projects appear to be spillover populations from India and China. Another thing that's happening is as shopping centers and malls built 1960-1980 fail (and are abandoned) ... new shopping centers are being built. Its uncanny.
Yes! Regarding the shopping malls, I always thought they could be their own self contained community. Center court for exercise, socializing, and gardening in inclement weather, large scale ag in the parking Lagoon in the summer...
I have been a proponent for New Urbanism for thirty years. I have worked unsuccessfully to establish several TND's in my region much to my financial detriment. Too much to unpack there. I am so glad you're supporting this. Good job James!
Nice to hear JHK largely abandon political discussions and return to discussion of traditional town planning and the challenges it entails. Chuck Marohn certainly has his hands full as a civil engineer and town planner in the Brainerd-Baxter Lakes area of Central Minnesota where development pressure is intense. If ever strong towns planning is needed it is here where the "Up North" feeling is rapidly disappearing. And thanks to Jim's guest for calling out James Oberstar, one of the longest serving and most environmentally-aware Congressmen Minnesota has ever had.
Medical care is changing. Blood tests and vaccines are given at retail stores or stand alone labs. There are doctors who only accept cash payment. You can bill your own insurance in some cases. The GLP1 revolution and the women demanding HRT be paid for by insurance will absolutely KILL insurance. Right now most people, in practice, just have catastrophic care. I am seeing a rebirth of small clinics and possibly small hospitals are coming back. It's all about the power grid.
Every time I turn around there's another EV. Gas is being pumped but the price is going up. IMO I think it's because as demand goes down, price goes up. (I have a business, and math degree) The entire power grid is being upended. There's no way to do it without the traditional city design. If you look at it from an electrical engineer perspective, there is no choice. There's no time for the tomfoolery of de gendering language, and open borders. BTW one of the Engineers I know is a woman. Education is changing. There are TWO Things going on. The university system was built on aristocracy from over 100 years ago. A new model is rising at the same time. IT's the same with medical care. The old medical care is fading and a new medicine is rising.
EXCELLENT. I have been looking into this. Italy never had a peerage. Greece was sort of like this too. Notice they evicted their kings when the king did not serve the polis. People were attached to their polis, their city and state. They were Citizens, not subjects or consumers. America is like Italy. There's a city, there's a county, a state and a federal government. Education is to educate people to serve the polis. Now the rest of Europe was all about a King, and a blood line. They were subjects. A Citizen has an education to support their polis. Hitler and Nazi GErmany didn't understand this citizen soldier thing. It looked like Chaos to them. The new power grid isn't going to support suburban sprawl. You cannot do that model of a power grid with sprawl. I know people that work for energy companies. America needs to decide if they are consumers or citizens. America is going to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future where the old model of gas power doesn't work. Nazi Germany was right about some things; Consumers don't make good citizens. Land is not a commodity, throwing away houses and moving when you don't like your government is not how a citizen behaves. We cannot keep packing people into America to support this. This system requires participation. The democrats are also about suburban sprawl, but maybe less so. They just don't get the citizen idea either.
Great discussion full of ideas, James and Chuck. I especially liked the part about how new technology (example discussed was the printing press) brings with it some unanticipated craziness. The futurist Alvin Toffler of Future Shock fame famously said, "You can't get a new technology without getting a new society." He and the media sage Marshall McLuhan each help explain so much of our unsettled world.
Most 15-minute-city advocates live in a bubble: childless, affluent, gentrified urban cores or quiet campuses. Their “diversity” is polite, high-income professionals who share their values.They’ve never dealt with roosters at 4 a.m., goats eating the neighbor’s garden, week-long parties with 120 dB music, or a chop shop running behind the duplex next door. So they genuinely believe packing everyone into walkable density creates charming vibrancy. The rest of us know it just removes the one thing keeping the peace: distance.They’re not wrong about car dependency. They’re just sheltered about human beings. People self segregate for a reason.
15 minute cities is completely different from new urbanism. 15 minute city is a totalitarian control mechanism to keep you confined because of a perceived lack of resources and to control the population. New Urbanism is exactly the opposite. It places no such limits on anyone it simply states that the best models for villages and towns are the time tested models of yesteryear and that we should return to that model as much as possible. Walkable towns, green spaces, people over cars, good life, not commuting.
WRONG. ITalians had tons of Children and they had 15 minute cities since antiquity. People have to learn to act like citizens and not selfish consumers. There are two different problems here. Go look at what the energy grid looks like. There is going to be no choice. Malls are going away, the way we do retail just cannot continue. These people better learn to get along with their neighbors or they won't fit into the new world.
Italian hill towns and old neighborhoods worked for a thousand years because the people inside the walls were almost genetically identical: same religion, same language, same holidays, same views on family honor, noise, animals, marriage, and child-rearing. When everyone already agrees on 99 % of life’s big questions, density feels like community. Lebanon in the 1960s and Yugoslavia under Tito looked exactly like that dream on the surface: Christians, Muslims, and Jews (or Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks) sharing the same walkable streets, cafés, and apartment blocks. Everyone swore the old hatreds were gone.Then the glue dissolved (demographics in Lebanon, dictatorship and debt in Yugoslavia), and the supposedly “cured” cultural incompatibilities exploded. Within a few years, neighbors who’d shared baklava or rakija were shelling each other’s apartments and ethnically cleansing the same six-block radius that used to be praised as a multicultural paradise. Beirut and Sarajevo went from urbanist poster children to war zones literally overnight. Shared values make density heavenly.
Unbridgeable differences make it hell, and no amount of corner cafés or bike lanes fixes the second case.That’s the part the “just be better neighbors” crowd never grapples with: Italy’s success came from extreme sameness, not from superior urban design or better manners. When you don’t have that sameness, preaching “learn to act Italian” is as realistic as telling cats and dogs to start acting like a married couple.
This is a ridiculous comment. America had a "15 minute" city until ww2. IT worked and btw there's no freaking choice because the power grid is going to change. Right this minute, there are 60-year-old people living in suburban sprawl. One person in a mansion, that's death right there. This has nothing to do with Yugoslavia. America was always about the POLIS, your state your city. We are citizens not consumers or subjects or children in need of dictators. Hide and watch because you are about to see the biggest EVICTION ever. You also know nothing about Italy NOTHING. They had an 800 year civil war between the Ghelf and the Ghibellines. It wasn't even a country until 1861.
Anna, you're right that pre-WWII American cities like New York or Boston were walkable "polises"—dense, mixed-use neighborhoods where you could grab a coffee, work, and school within 15 minutes on foot or trolley. They hummed because of shared cultural norms: Protestant/Catholic immigrants from Europe who, despite accents, agreed on basics like noise curfews, family roles, and public space etiquette. No overflow corrals in your alley or 2 a.m. parties as "community building." That sameness let density feel like citizenship, not confinement.The Guelphs vs. Ghibellines? Spot-on—they tore Italy apart for centuries (peaking 13th–14th, fading by 1529). But notice: they were still all Catholic Italians, fighting over pope vs. emperor, not Sharia vs. secularism or clan honor vs. individualism. It was a family feud within a shared worldview—brutal, but reconcilable because the "big questions" (God, land, blood) had common answers. Modern multiculturalism imports answers from 150 cultures at once, with no time for that convergence. Italy's 1861 unification came after those fractures healed through shared faith and blood, not before. On the grid: Yeah, it's buckling—NERC warns blackouts could spike 100x by 2030 from retiring coal/gas (12 GW in 2025 alone), surging demand (EVs, data centers, heat domes), and transmission delays. Suburbs amplify it: sprawling lines to empty McMansions guzzle resources, and one 60-year-old solo in a 4,000 sq ft house is indeed inefficient. But "no choice" except forced density? Only if we stick to intermittent renewables. Go nuclear—like France (70% nuclear, rock-solid grid, cheap power at €0.20/kWh)—and sprawl stays viable. No need to evict boomers or cram rivals into six-block hells. Abundant, dispatchable energy buys the distance that keeps incompatible folks civil. Yugoslavia/Lebanon aren't "ridiculous"—they're warnings: Tito's police state and Beirut's oil boom papered over divides until economics cracked it open. America's "polis" worked when values aligned; today's "biggest eviction" risks the same if we ignore that. Let's fix the grid with tech that preserves choice, not edicts that pretend cats and dogs can co-parent. What nuclear build-out do you see working here?
I have three kids(some by marriage) that are all in energy and working in AI and the new energy grid. Nuclear energy won't keep sprawl going. The kids show me what the power grid is going to look like. The USA cannot be an outlier. Gas is getting more and more expensive around the world while more is being pumped. That's because in other parts of the world they are already moving away from gas very quickly. There simply isn't the money to make highways for 3 60 year olds living in a mcmansion. We don't need the council for the new Urbanism. There are strings of cars day and night and there is no money to fix the roads. Immigrant communities didn't get along. Didn't you ever watch gangs of New York? What I mean by eviction: immigration is already going away. Other countries want to keep their people. STuffing more people in, isn't going to work. https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=moving+to+a+new+power+grid&mid=C7FABAE39A9723E9C155C7FABAE39A9723E9C155&FORM=VIRE
Who made you dictator?
Oh I LOVE this comment. This comment is made by a person who cannot accept reality. It's classic shoot the messenger. I see it daily in Trump Derangement syndrome. You can get rid of me and Donald Trump and everyone that you don't like but change is coming whether you like it or not. Take it up with God or the Universe. Maybe scream at the sky. Did you know hunter gatherers tried to kill agriculturalists. It didn't work! Agriculture came anyway. The entire world is moving away from gas power. The USA is going too. The power grid doesn't work with sprawl. That's just a damn fact.
Small govt libertarian here. I'd tell people the big sprawl was built largely by govt program/incentives. The little Normal Rockwell towns that everybody wants (or even great cities like NY or SF) were built by a much more frugal society w/ less govt. intervention. Today, those are zoned out.
Listening to JHK and CM reminds me of a simpler time enjoying the banter with the OG Duncan Crary and the Deer Ticks. As we stare into the abyss, I can barely make out a small village I'd like to crash land into. CHEERS and HAPPY HOLIDAYS
Agreed. I started listening to the podcast about 4 podcasts in. I had just read Geography of Nowhere when I discovered it. I don't listen much anymore, but I check in every once in a while for new urbanist content. There's a whole new generation of new urbanist content creators out there now, like Chuck. JHK was one of the OGs though.
I admit I've lost touch with the movement except solutionary rail, do you have any creators you'd recommend, thanks
Sure. Check out, Not Just Bikes, City Beautiful, City Nerd, Oh the Urbanity, and The Aesthetic City. They all have good content on YouTube.
This is interesting. This is a real interview as Jim asks some hard questions and the guest does his best to answer them. Lot of knowledge being disseminated here. As far as urban sprawl goes in the Hartford area it continues unabated; in its latest manifestation the State has nullified local zoning laws and developers from all over the US have moved in to build high density housing on the remaining farmland and in small towns & villages. The last of the tillable land is disappearing. The people moving into these projects appear to be spillover populations from India and China. Another thing that's happening is as shopping centers and malls built 1960-1980 fail (and are abandoned) ... new shopping centers are being built. Its uncanny.
Yes! Regarding the shopping malls, I always thought they could be their own self contained community. Center court for exercise, socializing, and gardening in inclement weather, large scale ag in the parking Lagoon in the summer...
I have been a proponent for New Urbanism for thirty years. I have worked unsuccessfully to establish several TND's in my region much to my financial detriment. Too much to unpack there. I am so glad you're supporting this. Good job James!
what are the credits for the intro music? so lovely.
Nice to hear JHK largely abandon political discussions and return to discussion of traditional town planning and the challenges it entails. Chuck Marohn certainly has his hands full as a civil engineer and town planner in the Brainerd-Baxter Lakes area of Central Minnesota where development pressure is intense. If ever strong towns planning is needed it is here where the "Up North" feeling is rapidly disappearing. And thanks to Jim's guest for calling out James Oberstar, one of the longest serving and most environmentally-aware Congressmen Minnesota has ever had.
Medical care is changing. Blood tests and vaccines are given at retail stores or stand alone labs. There are doctors who only accept cash payment. You can bill your own insurance in some cases. The GLP1 revolution and the women demanding HRT be paid for by insurance will absolutely KILL insurance. Right now most people, in practice, just have catastrophic care. I am seeing a rebirth of small clinics and possibly small hospitals are coming back. It's all about the power grid.
Every time I turn around there's another EV. Gas is being pumped but the price is going up. IMO I think it's because as demand goes down, price goes up. (I have a business, and math degree) The entire power grid is being upended. There's no way to do it without the traditional city design. If you look at it from an electrical engineer perspective, there is no choice. There's no time for the tomfoolery of de gendering language, and open borders. BTW one of the Engineers I know is a woman. Education is changing. There are TWO Things going on. The university system was built on aristocracy from over 100 years ago. A new model is rising at the same time. IT's the same with medical care. The old medical care is fading and a new medicine is rising.
EXCELLENT. I have been looking into this. Italy never had a peerage. Greece was sort of like this too. Notice they evicted their kings when the king did not serve the polis. People were attached to their polis, their city and state. They were Citizens, not subjects or consumers. America is like Italy. There's a city, there's a county, a state and a federal government. Education is to educate people to serve the polis. Now the rest of Europe was all about a King, and a blood line. They were subjects. A Citizen has an education to support their polis. Hitler and Nazi GErmany didn't understand this citizen soldier thing. It looked like Chaos to them. The new power grid isn't going to support suburban sprawl. You cannot do that model of a power grid with sprawl. I know people that work for energy companies. America needs to decide if they are consumers or citizens. America is going to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future where the old model of gas power doesn't work. Nazi Germany was right about some things; Consumers don't make good citizens. Land is not a commodity, throwing away houses and moving when you don't like your government is not how a citizen behaves. We cannot keep packing people into America to support this. This system requires participation. The democrats are also about suburban sprawl, but maybe less so. They just don't get the citizen idea either.
Great discussion full of ideas, James and Chuck. I especially liked the part about how new technology (example discussed was the printing press) brings with it some unanticipated craziness. The futurist Alvin Toffler of Future Shock fame famously said, "You can't get a new technology without getting a new society." He and the media sage Marshall McLuhan each help explain so much of our unsettled world.