Strong Towns presenter: 'Our cities are broke' and town planning should 'start small'

Chuck, a planner and engineer from Brainerd, Minnesota, told a Nantucket panel on [date not specified] that many North American cities cannot pay to maintain the infrastructure built during post‑World War II growth and that towns should prioritize small, observable fixes over large, grant‑driven projects. "Our cities are broke. They are financially insolvent," he said during a presentation that compared historical downtown patterns with suburban growth.

Chuck said that before the Great Depression most cities matured incrementally — small wooden buildings replaced over decades by denser brick structures — producing neighborhoods with high value per acre. He argued that the post‑war “cookie‑cutter” growth model was designed to grow population quickly but left municipalities with far more pipes, roads and hydrants per resident than earlier patterns required. "Where is the wealth that we are going to tap into to pay for that…