In part one of this very deep conversation with Charles (Chuck) Marohn, we explore his the deep insight has had from is media outlet Strong Town. Strong Town’s mission is to support a model of development that allows America’s cities, towns and neighborhoods to become financially strong and resilient. Strong Towns even has a few principles:
•Strong cities, towns and neighborhoods cannot happen without strong citizens (people who care).
•Local government is a platform for strong citizens to collaboratively build a prosperous place.
•Financial solvency is a prerequisite for long term prosperity.
•Land is the base resource from which community prosperity is built and sustained. It must not be squandered.
•A transportation system is a means of creating prosperity in a community, not an end unto itself.
•Job creation and economic growth are the results of a healthy local economy, not substitutes for on
In this conversation with Chuck we explore his journey in building a movement around the concept of Strong Towns. In this episode, he shares many lessons he has learned along the way and it is full of lots of insight. A few major questions stood out for me:
•How do you become someone who has less answers and more questions?
•How do we acknowledge that everyone has imperfections?
•How do we learn to change shared relationship approach to how we build cities?

One of the telling changes that stood out for me was that there are things we take as normal, that were once considered to be absurd ideas. Chuck describes how the notion that people living in the city would one day live in corn fields that were only accessible by cars, it would have been thought to be a crazy idea. Yet, that is what America has built. We call it the suburbs and there are body of assumptions that make living in the suburb inaccessible for poor people. This is just one example of how we can rethink the way we build villages and cities that work for more people.