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Foreign.
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Got my bus pass been a ride first class streetcar downtown with a fine ladies in the peeps.
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Hello and welcome to Upzone. The 2026 World cup starts tomorrow and it's bringing millions of visitors to cities across North America. And for many of those visitors, one of the biggest surprises won't be the soccer it'll be how difficult it is to move around. A recent Fortune magazine article titled the US Campaign to Host the World cup now soccer fans will trade their country's train system for the US's D rated infrastructure by Katerina Giono and published last week, points out that fans from countries with extensive train systems are arriving in cities instead built largely around cars. That raises a bigger question. When a city prepares for an event like the World cup or the Olympics, is it doing what is needed to invest in long term value or just trying to build things that allow them to survive a month of global attention? Today I've got a great conversation lined up with Strong Towns President Chuck Marone and Pasadena City Council member Rick Cole. Rick is a longtime Strong Towns member and a familiar voice to many of you from past appearances. Also on the Strong Towns podcast, Rick has spent more than 40 years in the trenches of local government, helping cities wrestle with growth and public finances. He served as the Mayor of Pasadena, city Manager in three different California cities, Deputy Mayor for Budget and Innovation in Los Angeles, which is one of the host cities, and the Executive Director of the Congress for New Urbanism, or cnu. Today, Rick is back in local government, serving on the Pasadena City Council and so welcome Rick. Good to have you on OPZone.
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C
I'm glad to be here, especially at this moment where the spotlight of the world is shined on America's deficiencies.
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A
Well, yeah, we'll certainly come to you to discuss that. And I wish that this could just be a soccer conversation because the Canadian generation of soccer players is just phenomenal and I'm very excited to see what will happen. But we're going to talk about transportation infrastructure as we go in. And from the article opening the author starts by referencing the Sopranos and the vignettes in that show of worldly wise visitors arriving in the us. I'll just read it. The memes are almost everywhere. One of the Straight from Italy Furio, disgusted while looking out of a cab window at the standard American Road, complete with fast food chains and struggling shoe stores and nail salons that make up America's strip malls. Perhaps you've seen another Sopranos meme of the show's namesake similarly sitting in a car that picked him up at Newark Airport, looking out onto fuel and wastewater treatment facilities that dot the New Jersey Turnpike, A scene juxtaposed earlier with his family idyllic trip in Italy. Tony Soprano's America rendered in all its asphalt glory. The United States infrastructure, to say the least, leaves much to be desired. The country spent years campaigning for the right to host the world's most watched sporting events, promising FIFA that it was ready. And with an expected 5 million visitors leaving their home countries complete with high speed rail, free or low cost, reliable transportation and livable yet unplanned walkable cities to attend the World cup next month, American host cities are scrambling to sustain that increased demand on their cities and are finally questioning why the average American city pales in comparison to that of almost every other World cup host city. And so I find that fascinating and we're going to go into more depth in the article. But what is it that stood out as we start this article? Rick, why don't you go first? You were appreciating much of what was covered there as you live in a host community.
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C
Well, not only a host community. In Los Angeles, actually, the games are being played at SoFi Stadium, but Pasadena in 1994 actually hosted in the Rose bowl the World cup final, final matches, including I was mayor. I got to attend Italy versus Brazil, a very hot, very memorable final game which crowned Brazil as the champion that year. That was also the time when I was mayor of Pasadena, when Pasadena made a commitment in its general plan, which every city in California is supposed to have and also supposed to follow. We made a commitment to seven principles. And one of those principles was Pasadena will be a city where people can circulate without cars. That wasn't we're going to take away people's car keys here in Southern California, which famously and somewhat deceptively or somewhat misleadingly is a better word to say, is considered to be a place where people love their cars. They this is a place where people are dependent on their cars. And that's why we made the commitment that people should have a choice. That's also something that most Americans pay lip service to, is that you should have choices. And what we wanted to do was to make sure that you weren't condemned to use a car, if you could use a car, and you weren't condemned just to stand for half an hour next to a signpost in the 100 degree heat, which we get in summer in Pasadena waiting for a bus that may or may not come on time. We wanted people to have safe Affordable, healthy and convenient alternatives to the car. So that's something we made a commitment to 30 years ago. We still woefully fall short, although in Southern California we stand out better than most. But that's a very low bar. Like my former boss, Mayor Eric Garcetti used to say when they said he was one of the most tech savvy mayors in America. He said that's like being the tallest building in Canoga Park. We in Los Angeles know that Canoga park doesn't have any buildings over two stories.
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A
It was also in the article that it talks about Atlanta having a plan that there was no private parking within a large swath of the city when they hosted the Oly. So it's. It sort of overlaps with what you're describing in Pasadena that real measures were taken to be able to make it possible to get around by bus, by shuttle, by all of these different tools. And I think it's highlighting in the article, I mean, there I'm. I would take an exception to some of the tone of the way that it opens it up and you know, Tony Soprano's Asphalt City, but they're. The core element or argument of the piece is that America's top engineers have given the country a C rating in terms of its infrastructure.
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C
And I would give America's civil engineers a C rating on their approach to infrastructure.
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A
Right. Well, maybe that's a good pickup for Chuck. I mean, what you have, I think at times take an exception to some of the methods of the association of Society of Civil Engineers. I do want to share just some of your own thoughts, especially about the idea that this tournament will be a wake up call to really plan a livable city and improve the way we get around.
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B
I read this article and I, I was reminded of this thing that happened to me in 2000, way back at the, you know, turn of the millennia. I was part of a Rotary exchange group. So I was 25 years old, went to Italy, southern Italy. And what they would do is they would embed you with families there. There. Being in Rotary is like a high prestige thing. So these are the wealthier, more connected families. And I'm, I'm there like with a family and eating at their table, chatting with them. Mom, dad, two kids. And they start describing to me that their English was okay, not great. So we're having this conversation. The kids would interpret a lot of stuff. They're describing a trip they had to America, starting in New York, going to Chicago, Yellowstone, California, down the California coast, over to Texas, ending in Florida. It winds up that they took the Greyhound bus on this trip. 40 days of grey, they said we saw all of America. It was not very friendly in terms of getting around. It took me a while to understand they were on a Greyhound bus doing this trip. Now I think our assumption as Americans, and I'm certain the assumption of a lot of people who think about us hosting the World cup is these Europeans will just come here and act like Americans. They'll rent cars at lax, they'll drive to venues, they'll park in big parking lots. This was not a family who could not have afforded to rent a car. Like they, they had the money to rent a car, they had the money to fly here and spend a month here in the US it was a family that wanted to see all of the us but they came here with kind of like a European understanding of how the world works. Like the world works. I get off a plane, I get on a bus. Like, why would I drive a car? That would be insane. I got a one venue, I go to the next, I walk between venues. Like, of course I do. Like that's what, that's what even high, high class, like Europeans would do. Like that is their expectation. And so I've, I've had seared into my brain ever since this idea of, you know, this rather well off, well to do Italian families riding on a Greyhound between Chicago and Yellowstone national park wondering, like, what kind of countries is like, where are we at? And now we have 5 million people coming to North America from, from parts around the world with the expectations that they're going to get off the plane and they're going to experience not just the wealthiest country on Earth, you know, the, the country with the largest gdp. I was reminded this week that if you took the GDP of England as a country and made England a state, it would be the 51st state in terms of GDP. So like, our economy is massive, our capacity is massive. I think the assumption of people who recognize that wealth would be like, well, of course they must have good public infrastructure. Of course they must have walkable cities. Of course they must have transit that actually works. And I do think that that juxtaposition between the expectations of how it would work in a country that by all accounts on economic paper would be way, way, way behind us. The expectation that they would have coming here and then seeing that to me is, should be a wake up call to us. Not in the way that this article frames it. You know, American Society of Civil Engineers. We're just not investing enough in Infrastructure. It's more of a question of what have we chosen to invest in? And we've chosen to invest in consumptive development as opposed to additive development, which is where all these places are coming from.
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A
And in the run up to the last World cup in Qatar, there was a ton of media coverage of slave labor being used and inhumane working conditions. And those have not been the articles that have been written about the World Cup. In Mexico, Canada and China. In China, in the United States. I don't know if that was a Freudian slip of some sort, but it. But what stands out to me is would there have been this level of discussion about infrastructure if there was a single host city that. That was hosting all of the Games? And every. All of the pain, all of the potential gain, all of the, like, noise and chaos was just constrained to one place. But because there's 14 US host cities, it's sort of like a. An entire police lineup where every single one of them is guilty of not meeting standard. And I think that there's this. Maybe it is because I pay attention to infrastructure and care about municipal finances, but I'm interested in the way that, like, there's a lot of focus about the fact that a bunch of Scots have rented their own bus fleet to be able to travel, travel from Boston, where the Games are happening, out to Providence where they can afford to find hotels, where there's the sense of like, wow, are we having to resort to using yellow school buses instead of proper shuttles or light rail in order to be able to get people to the various stadiums? And then multiply that times 14. And so there's a scale factor that I find fascinating in this, that this is the first time that a World cup has been hosted across a whole continent. And the consequence is that it sheds a light on handful of the cities, Mexico and Canada that are going to be okay, and then a lot of the US Cities where people are going to really struggle and ultimately the games will go on. And I'm sure everyone will turn away and say, like, oh, that was great, but kind of like that Italian family, we didn't expect that we would be stuck in a quickie parking, you know, lots of. For three hours while the bus was broke down. And so there's a real experience factor there that I think is interesting. And maybe, Rick, for yourself, like, how is it that these big events sort of shed light on infrastructure? And I mean, some of the time we just want people to pay attention to this. So is that a net good that people are Actually talking about infrastructure or is this a distorted version of that question?
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C
I think both. I think the article that was the genesis of our discussion today put it best that we shouldn't be dependent upon scrambling at the last minute to make room for visitors, especially by the nature of things, high end visitors from around the world, this should be the norm. And in fact, we're more focused in the Los Angeles region on the Olympics, the World cup. We don't have as significant a strain, but the Olympics is projected to be the equivalent of seven Super Bowls a day for two straight weeks, followed after a two week break by a much smaller but still significant Paralympic Games. So we're pretty focused on that and pretty freaked out about that because while some significant investment has been made in our airport, probably on the order of 10 billion, which was much needed, and so that's, that's something that couldn't happen overnight. And fortunately there was vision enough to start this a decade ago so that we've put up with 10 years of miserable construction. But now we're going to have for the next generation a first class, world class airport. We've also finished the only subway that's under construction in the country, extending after a long delay, the subway that serves the core of Los Angeles ultimately out to UCLA by the time of the Olympics. Three stations along the way have just opened. So there's been some progress, but we're 700 and some days away from having to get people around. And security is such that they cannot provide to the venues and the venues, because Los Angeles isn't building venues. We're using the ones we have from 1984 and 1932 and the other sports facilities that have been built in the years since. We have to get people all over from where they stay to where they visit to. If they go to swimming, it's in one place and they go to fencing, it's in another place and they go to soccer, it's in the third place. So we think it's going to cost $2 billion just to move people around during that two week period. And of course, the day before Donald Trump could decide that, no, we're not giving you $2 billion. And then what? Do we not have an Olympics? Or are we on the hook for $2 billion worth of costs? And we promised the world that we would have the most sustainable Olympics ever. There just aren't 2,000, you know, or 5,000 electric buses out there that we could borrow for a couple of weeks from wherever they're scattered around the country. So we're pretty freaked out about the ability to actually pull this off in less than two years. Well, just, just about exactly two years now. And so the World cup is kind of an asterisk compared to that Leviathan Challenge. But it is to your original question, it is an important opportunity to talk about why are we freaked out? Why are we dependent on scrambling to meet the needs of what has frankly become a very corporate event? Yes, we all have. I mean, they're wonderful, heartwarming stories of gold medalists and, you know, miracle soccer kicks and underdog heroes. Whether it's Cameroon gets in the finals or something, or some player that has a wonderful story. Those are genuine. But the games themselves have become giant corporate business.
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A
So one of the things in the article, it said that the D student is the one that is hosting the party. So the Americans, American Society for Civil engineering, they quote Dr. Marsha Anderson Bomar, representing the organization, the oldest national engineering organization has given the transit infrastructure in the United States a D and the general state of infrastructure a C, noting that stormwater, which is a biggie, is the one that also is a D. In that situation, should D students even host parties? I know when my grades were at a D, I wasn't allowed to do anything. Chuck, what do you think? Like, is that the right way to, for communities to understand this?
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B
I, I feel like maybe instead of saying the D student is hosting the party because really the D students were the ones that generally did the most partying and probably hosted the most parties. Yeah, it's the D student is hosting the study session.
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A
Right.
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B
Like, or leading the study session, which, you know that, that's not a, that's not a plan for success really.
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A
Or the broke student is the one hosting the party and pay for all the beer. Yeah.
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B
Well, I loved in the article the vignette of Europeans doing TikTok videos to show how to walk down the freeway without getting killed and you know, where to, where, where to kind of try to cross the, the stroad. Here's the thing, Norman. I'll say this. I didn't even know Canada had a soccer team. So I'm not a soccer person. And that may out me with a bunch of people who are like, I know Carly, our colleague is super passionate about, about European football. I'm, I'm not and I think most the aspirational thing about this is that we hope to get more Americans interested in soccer, in European football and what have you. Because, you know, this will be here and we're all going to be around it. And now we'll all get excited about it. But the reality is, is, like, most people in the US don't care, right? Like, they're not tuning into these, these events. They're not going to be watching. They're not waiting with bated breath to see if, you know, I'm trying to pick out two teams here, but, you know, like, no, no one, no one's really going to care if Algeria and Belgium, like, meet up in the second round, you know, like, what have you.
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A
I'm rooting for Iran versus the U.S. that'll be.
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B
That would be wild, wouldn't it? I mean, I do think that part of what makes things interesting in a World cup is. Is the, the nationalism of it, right? And it's, it's conflict by other means. And so. Yeah, but I do hope that one of the things that happens is that we do wrestle with the TikTok memes. This is the way people get their news and communicate today. I remember when Walt Disney World announced that they were redoing the attraction Soarin, which is this virtual you, you sit in a chair, it lifts you up like you're in a hang glider. And then it shows you a big IMAX thing where you fly over. In California, it's soaring over California. Out in Florida, it's soaring around the world. So you get scenes from different parts of the world. And, and they announced that they were doing a soaring over America, and people started to make TikTok and Instagram videos of soaring over Walmart parking lots and strip stores and, you know, down, down the middle of Stroads. This is what America looks like. And I, I, I, I. That was funny because it was funny, the irony of it, but it was also sad because it, it is what soaring over America would be. And, and I do think that there's something provocative here and helpful that hopefully, if we all are exposed to it to a degree and kind of get it, is seeing ourselves through other people's eyes. There's the old adage of, you know, the frog in hot water and, you know, you just get used to the heat of the water and what have you. I do think that there's a certain, you know, I live in a small town. I saw a stat that said most of the people who live in my city have never been outside of Minnesota, let alone, you know, most, a high percentage have never been outside of the county, let alone around the country or around the world. You start to get a sense of, like, this is normal, like, this is how people live this is, you know, wow, we paved the road. We're doing really well. And in a sense there is, and I'll borrow a term from the, the, the 90s, the, the soft. I think it was the bigotry of low expectations, but it's like a we, we, we have created for ourselves such a low standard of what success should look like, that I feel like seeing the country through someone else's eyes, particularly someone who, and I'll say this in, in a way where I like, admire the rest of the world for this, but I think the average American looks down on the rest of the world, as, you know, economically less than us or not up to our standard. I think to have people from Algeria come here and go, what kind of third world country is this? That should be eye opening to Americans because that is the proper reaction to the strip mall and the Chuck E. Cheese and the abandoned parking lot. I mean, that you don't see that in other parts of the world that is uniquely American. And I think, you know, hopefully having us exposed to that reaction will lubricate this conversation a little bit.
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C
A couple things on that. Marshall McLuhan, who's a Canadian, Was a Canadian, had a version similar in the metaphor to your frog analogy of boiling, which is it said, I don't know who discovered water, but it probably wasn't a fish. Meaning that when we swim in our own environment, we're not aware even of the most essential element in our life. And getting around is one of the most essential. Beauty is one of the most essential elements in our life. Health is one of the most essential. And we've sacrificed getting around efficiently. We sacrificed beauty and we certainly sacrificed our health in pursuing an autocentric model. And that's why, you know, Los Angeles is different. Chuck, you said most Americans in Los Angeles, there are a lot of people who care about soccer. Because in Los Angeles we have not only a lot of immigrants, but a lot of people who are well traveled because it's a very cosmopolitan part of our country. Which is why some of the people in your part of the country hate us or are distrustful of us, have
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B
a little bit of tension, preconceived notions, and vice versa, right?
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C
Oh, there is that too. Absolutely. So the upshot of that though is I think it's important to not paint too stark a contrast because a. A lot of the European countries that we now are in awe of early on tried to pursue an American car centric approach and actually got fairly far down the road and the, the urban paradise that is Central Paris now is the result of conscious political will and leadership. And so if the French can make a turnaround, then maybe that says something about the potential for us to wake up and make a turnaround as well. And there are certainly tremendous forces going on around the world to replicate America's mistakes in Qatar or in China, where they may be building high speed rail in China, but they're also building highways, multiplane expressways and building Le Corbusier places for people to live, these gleaming towers in a park that turn out to be so soulless and sterile and subject to the same kind of critique that Strong Towns is making of America's dominant development model. So this is a dynamic, right? And America and the rest of the world, as we converge in these events, we ought to be having the dialogue of they ought to come and say, well, let's not make America's mistakes. Yeah. Because this is where, this is where the road leads. And for America to say, maybe this is time for a U turn. And if, if Mary Hidalgo can read a 15 minute city. And by the way, it's mostly central Paris, right? I mean, the suburbs of Paris are still look a lot more like our soaring over France, you know, version of. I don't think they're Walmarts, but they're going to sell them. But you know, the French equivalent of autocentric development, this is now a worldwide struggle and we need to make common cause with the people around the world who are showing the way toward a more livable and more healthy and particularly in the subject of Strong towns, a more economically sustainable development pattern for the future of our plan.
- [26:59]
A
When Paris hosted the games, they didn't put the games out in the suburbs. They hosted them in the core. They had participation of their core stadiums. In Kansas City it'll be Arrowhead Stadium in the middle of a large parking lot. It'll be very different. But what stands out to me is that, you know, to use a very simple metaphor, like when my mother in law is coming to visit, my wife and I are scrambling, I'm vacuuming and cleaning up the toilet. We're doing a lot of things to like take care of the stuff that we probably let slide, probably should have taken care of earlier just for like human cleanliness purposes. But like we're generally okay, but we've lived in places. I've been a renter since I was 18.
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C
That's superficial. You're not, you're not, you're not building a new foundation, you're not replacing your roof, you're not Adding on another room. And I think you're right, we should be sprucing up to put our best face on for 5 million people coming around the world and some of the more superficial things that we've neglected. But if we're having to hide our homes, if we're having to make do for the fact that we don't have decent transportation, that is profoundly more disturbing and profoundly more concerning about what we need to do. So because you can't fix your roof before your mother in law visit, you can vacuum the living room, but we should be fixing the roof on the house and not waiting for anybody to visit because it's our home.
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A
Yeah. As a tenant now for since I've been 18, I've been renting and in that whole time to we've lived in places where when my mother in law came to visit, we did our best, but our landlord had not cleaned or fixed the holes so we would have slugs in our, on our plates and it was like, oh, just put that one back in the, in the sink. And it was this challenge that I think a lot of residents feel that they are tenants with poor landlords. And that is I think a political culture problem. You know, I think at strong towns we're talking about the fact that like we need competence in local government, competence to address needs early in the process. We don't need to wait for pressure to build, but we should be routinely taking care of roofs and streets and all of those different layers. And, and that's the struggle that, you know, when my mother in law arrives and my landlord has a whole list of things that I have continued to bring to them and then they just say like I'm not going to deal with that, not going to deal with that. But then when they want to show the property to a new tenant that all of a sudden they're, you know, quick to replace everything. That's kind of what it feels like in terms of what visitors see versus what residents live with. Chuck has different standards, but what are some of the things for you?
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C
I can't generalize from Los Angeles to the whole country, but I think paying attention to what's happening in Los Angeles is instructive. A the mayor recently unveiled something that every well run city has but Los Angeles has lacked for decades, which is a capital improvement program. And it's 26 projects all around the Olympics. So we, we still don't have the capital improvement program, but we have a pasted together last minute capital, a wish
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B
list of big projects we want to do.
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C
No, no, no. These are not big projects. These are actually practical and they'll get done.
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B
Oh, good.
- [30:23]
C
But it's 26 things. The big things are, are not even, you know, on paper. They're just indefinitely postponed. Here's what just happened in the election here in Los Angeles, and we're still counting votes even probably by the time this airs. But the Mayor, there are three citywide officers. The mayor got 34% of the vote. She's in a runoff. The city attorney got 19% of the vote. She's gone. She will not be reelected. And my former boss, the controller of the city of Los Angeles, which in Los Angeles is elected, he does not control the budget, ironically, but he's the, the watchdog and has been relentless over the past three and a half years at the Strong Town's message of we are functionally bankrupt because of our capital deficit and that ignoring it doesn't make it go away, it just makes it more expensive and that we have to fundamentally change our approach. He was reelected without. He doesn't have to face a runoff because he got 60% of the vote. So the public is not stupid. They know their landlords have been negligent, if not slum. And it's time to change landlords. It's time for the public to internalize the Strong Town message and recognize that we're not going to solve this overnight. There's no sound bite solutions for 100 years dependence and 60 years of neglecting our infrastructure investment. It's going to be a generational challenge. One, to change our mindset and two, to actually change our landscape. But we absolutely need to do it. And it's like what we all know about trees. The best time to do it is to plant a tree is 20 years ago and today. So we didn't do it 20 years ago, we didn't do it 60 years ago. But today is a good day to start and especially because we've got 5 million people coming to visit us.
- [32:35]
A
Hey, this is Norm. I wanted to take a minute to point you towards something we've put together for our members, the Strong Towns Commons. Strong Towns conversations have lived in a lot of places. From article comments to live events and tools like the Strong Towns Action Lab, the Commons is where we bring those threads into one member space. For now, we just wanted to share a little bit more context for what the Commons is and how it fits into the Strong Towns world. All right, let's get back to the episode.
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B
I do think that there is, and to me, shifting this back on to average Americans. And the way we think about this, I feel like, is the cultural. It's the deep need we have. I was in Ireland for the first time in like 2003, 2002, three time period. It was astounding to me because this is the run up to the great financial crisis, the housing boom and bust, the subprime crisis. It's fascinating to see how this played out in other parts of the world, because in Ireland, you could travel the countryside and you would come to a small town and on the edge, you know, the small Irish town, all walkable, the pub over here, the bed and breakfast over here, Everybody lived within, you know, walking distance of it. You wouldn't drive on a normal day because why would you? There's no place to park and you're just going three blocks that way. Anyway. It functioned really well. But out on the edge of many of them, there was the American subdivision. There was a cul de sac with 10 homes. And when I inquired about it, that was basically like their. That was their housing boom. That was like the new stuff. And it was looked at as, when you become prosperous, you can become more like America. When you become rich, you can basically have all this wasted space, all this massive infrastructure, all this stuff that, in a sense, you're just not making very good use of because you're rich, you're wealthy. And now in Ireland, we are. We are becoming wealthy because we joined the EU and our interest rates went down and we're able to borrow a bunch of money and da, da, da, da. And then in 2008, it ended difficult for us. It ended in cataclysmic disaster, like multigenerational disaster for Ireland because Ireland did not have the, in a sense, economic back backdrop to print their own money and do all the, like, insane stuff that we've been able to do to keep it all going. They had to reckon with it very quickly. I've been to Ireland since, and those are not. Not only are they no longer building those things, they're also kind of looked at as the albatross around their necks because, well, all of this stuff makes sense. That made. No, that was. That was what we did when we were drunk and crazy and. And now we have to live in the real world. I juxtapose that with people coming to the US and looking at it as just a. A country where we're all drunk and crazy all the time in terms of, like, how we build, because they're. They're, in a sense, it's not a Fixable problem. If people are willing to pay X to sustain the infrastructure in front of their house and the infrastructure that they need to get across town and get to their job and get their groceries and get to the doctor, their capacity is X. And we can push them maybe to like 1 1/2 x with the right messaging and whatever, but the cost is actually 5x or 10x. That is a growth pattern disconnected from reality. That is not fixable. Right. There's, there's no reconciling that. And that I feel like is the thing, you know, to me, if we could get one cultural advantage out of this, it would be the kind of recognition that doing more of this is just crazy. And if I could get a second thing, it would be the idea that making investments in walking and biking and adding a house on every block in a neighborhood like these are what sound investments look like. Not the additional lane on the highway or the new interchange or the new off ramp with the McDonald's and the, the frontage road and the, the Hampton Inn or whatever it is. Those are consumptive. We need to get to a development pattern that is not consumptive but is actually, you know, capacity building investments. And that's my norm. That's my disappointment with the American Society of Civil Engineers as well. I mean, I do think they are the ones involved in the consumption, not the investment. And they use the language of investment. I mean, this article does, but it's not actually an investment. It's a consumptive development pattern where if you go back to the Irish example, this is what we do when we're really super rich. And I think they didn't have the backdrop so they had to recognize that, no, that's what we do when we're crazy. We have to get to that same recognition somehow.
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C
And let me offer three frames that help us move in that direction. One is Jane Jacobs. And I always have to preface a reference to Jane Jacobs that now modern professional planners all pay lip service to Jane Jacobs and none of them read her books. But sorry for the departure from the.
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B
No, they, they like a meme version of Jane Jacobs. Oh, she liked Walkable Cities and Infill. And they don't actually struggle with her
- [38:23]
C
insights, particularly in her books about economics that followed the Death and Life of Great American Cities. And she had a phrase that I think we need to keep in mind, which is catastrophic. Now, money. It's when you have enough money for a giant thing that everything gets plowed under for that giant thing instead of the sensible incremental approach that Strong Towns has laid out. The second is a Republican economist from the 70s, Herb Stein, who was actually chair of the President's Council on Economic Advisors. And his first version of his principle was things that are not sustainable have a tendency to come to a stop. And that was sort of subtle. So he later shortened it to things that can't go on forever don't. And I think we are beginning to bump up against some of those. And it's much better not to wait until after the crisis devastates generational wealth and the personal lives of innocent people. But rather to be, since the predictable is preventable to know that it's not sustainable, now is the time to be turning the ship before it hits the iceberg. And then the last framing came from one of the mayors that I served, because in addition to having been a mayor, I worked for 20 elected officials in the course of my career as a professional city management leader. And she said, we need to plan for 2050, not 1950. And I think, despite the lip service to Jane Jacobs, the vast majority of our plans and 99% of our codes are designed to create the world of 1950. And the world of 1950 turned out to be, as Chuck, more than anyone, I think, in the country is eloquently framed a gigantic experiment that has that we now understand is like giving syphilis to black prisoners in Alabama. It didn't work out very well.
- [40:51]
B
I actually think it's almost worse in some ways, because when you say to planners, plan for 2050, not 1950, they actually say, how do we make sure that by 1950 we are building the version of 1950 that we. It almost like empowers them. If you said to me, build for 2050, the reaction should be, I don't know what 2050 is going to be like. I just know it's going to be very different than today. And so instead of taking the 1950s model and putting it in place and planning for it, I'm actually going to have a lot of humility and approach this with adaptability and flexibility and, you know, a lot of optionality in the way that I plan.
- [41:35]
C
Which is the core message of Jane Jacobs, right?
- [41:39]
B
Yes.
- [41:40]
C
Jacobs, like so many religious prophets, you know, from Jesus Christ to Karl Marx, have been, you know, crystallized, like what they said in the context, and when they said it now should applied often misapplied, you know, 100 years later, a thousand years later, 2,000 years later. Jane Jacobs was ultimately observational and practical. She didn't say these are the laws of. Of life that need to be applied, you know, as if every place is Greenwich Village in 1959. She was extraordinarily supple in her thinking and paid attention to what works. And that, again, that's the essence of, you know. Yes, Schumacher. Small is beautiful. It's the essence of Jane Jacobs. It's the essence of strong towns. And we keep building bigger, gaudier, less sustainable versions of 1950. And, and it's. It's ever more rickety and ever more ultimately unsustainable. And when it all comes crashing down, people will be shocked. Like, wait, it was so big, it was so beautiful. And, and. But crashing down because it is unsustainable. And you've done the numbers, Judd. And I've done the numbers. I've balanced 20 operating budgets. But getting to functional sustainability in government means you have to fix your roof and you have to build for what's sustainable. And no American cities have actually made that supply pivot.
- [43:32]
B
It just reminds me, as a Catholic, how no one has ever taken the words of Jesus Christ and used them for anti Christian ends. Right. I mean, I feel like there's something deeply human here that I keep going back to, which is we are wired as evolutionary beings to want the quick and easy. And I actually think that you can look at that as like a human failing. And I, I would agree with you. And I think that, you know, the best societies have had kind of like cultural ways to push back on that failing. But when you, you know, are able to kind of unleash it with maximum affluence and maximum capacity for debt taking on. And, you know, like, you. You do kind of end up with a consumptive approach. And, well, it's.
- [44:17]
C
It's a drunken crazy, which inevitably.
- [44:20]
B
Drunken crazy. Yeah.
- [44:23]
C
And the cirrhosis of the liver. Right. Which is even more worrisome. The hangover is a signal from your body. Stop doing this. And then, you know, the lights come on and the music starts and your friends raise a glass and you're back to what is not going to feel good over 10, 20, 30 years.
- [44:47]
B
So, Norm, maybe the World cup then is like the prelude to an intervention where, you know, all these guests show up at our party and they're like, we thought your house was in order. And oh, my gosh, what a mess. This is worse than we thought it was. And maybe this is just setting the stage for the big. The big cultural intervention. We need to get our cities back in order.
- [45:14]
A
I love it. So through soccer, the US Is Sport though, Americans will start listening to people not from America. I love it. But a different conclusion is drawn just from the peculiar pressure of this World cup cycle that Dr. Anderson Bomer from the Society of Civil Engineers concludes. I hope this experience leaves Americans more supportive of investing in infrastructure. That would be a good outcome maybe. Chuck, just for you, what is actually the good outcome? Is it, is it that intervention sort of clicking and us saying actually maybe some of our investment practices have been part of the problem here? What are some of the things that you would offer as maybe an alternate way of phrasing what a good outcome of this would be?
- [45:55]
B
A good outcome for civil engineers would be the recognition that they have been a huge part of the problem and that their standards, recommendations, approaches, wish lists, propaganda, spreading what have you has been very self serving and not servant of the country and our future. I do think a, a good outcome, society wise would be that we in a sense look across the ocean at, at other places and, and really when you know that Toronto and Vancouver are the two Canadian cities and Mexico City is one of the three Mexican cities, I think, you know, as a U.S. city looking to those places and saying they've even got better systems set up for doing this than we do, that maybe just wealth and money and GDP growth and what, you know, just massive capacity is not the answer. But doing better with what you have has got to be part of the conversation. That would be what a good outcome sounds like to me. I think we intuitively understand that like might doesn't make right or that, you know, quantity over quality is, is not necessarily a virtue. But I think translating those cultural insights into how we approach these problems would be a real, a real breakthrough for Americans.
- [47:23]
A
And Rick, I'll ask you a related question which is in la, after throwing a big party, the plan is to prepare and then throw another bigger party. In that context, what should some of the outcomes or lessons be that, that you'd like to see sort of in the interim that people can begin to grapple with. You can cancel it, but there are definitely different strategies and approaches that, that should be taken. What would be some of those outcomes?
- [47:46]
C
Chuck, I know that you almost are proud of how little you know about soccer, but again, we're much more exposed to it in the Southern California context. So I would hope that we would recognize that this auto dependence is the equivalent of an own goal. When you accidentally kick the ball into your own goal and it counts against you, right? And that we would recognize that we've been doing it accidentally in that we didn't know we were doing something that was fundamentally unsustainable, unhealthy, and in many ways, really un American. So if we recognize that, then we would say, as any coach would, as any team players would say, I don't
- [48:42]
B
want to do that again.
- [48:44]
C
I do not want to lose the game. Because we kick the ball into our own goal. And so we would wise up and we would practice a different approach to the game to make sure we don't kick the ball into our own hole. And we, we. We turn around and, and move the ball in the other direction toward a different goal. A goal of. That's really steeped in, In America. In American history, Americans used to make beautiful cities and we used to make beautiful towns, and we go to them like Williamsburg, Virginia, or we love those places and the places that have been preserved over time. So we need to reverse field, right? Quit kicking the ball into our own goal, set a new goal. As a country that is going to be really difficult to execute between now and the Olympics. But I think actually this campaign, depending on who ends up in the runoff with the incumbent Bear, it's going to be kind of a nightmare if it stays the way it is. But the votes are now shifting as we slowly count through them if this really should be a debate about what do we want after the day? Because at this point, the Olympics are going to be the Olympics, and they're kind of on automatic pilot. But what do we want to do afterwards? Because what do we want to do when we're cleaning up the bottles that have been left on the floor? We're. We're throwing away the Dixie cups that, you know, that are half full of stale beer, we're taking down the streamers and doing and tidying up again. What kind of house do we want to build to live in? Because ultimately that's more important than the success, or lack thereof, of the big party. By the way, in 1984, you know, that. That put a lot of pride in Los Angeles. We did a good job then, and I don't think we'll be able to say that this time. There was very little opportunity for that. But I do think that there is an opportunity for soberly sitting on the couch and talking about, okay, party's over, let's get serious.
- [51:20]
A
And in an infinite game of building communities that become stronger over time, we can recover from own goals, we can continue to use it, but we also need to change course as we do that. So great discussion. Really appreciate it. And go, Canada, go. But let's go into the down zone now, Rick, the down zone is when we just take something that we're reading or discovering or watching or that we just want to share because it's been something you've appreciated and Chuck's recommendation said also pick a team favorite. Now I'm going to say you can't be on patriotic, so you have to pick a team that is not the US Or Canada. Actually you can say can Canada. I just can't. So I'm encouraging you to do that. But Chuck, why don't you do the down zone first? What's your item and which team are you rooting for?
- [52:05]
B
So I've been finishing up. I had, I had a eight hour car ride each of the last two days to go to Omaha and back for a conference, which was great. They were amazing place, great hosts, lots of really great housing stuff going on in Omaha. I listened to this book called the Mission by Tim Wiener, the CIA in the 21st century. And it brought back all of these like memories I had of Colin Powell going to the UN and explaining Iraq's WMDs and Abu Ghraib and all this stuff. And the interesting thing is like, I was in, I was, I was probably deeper into the news cycle at the time certainly than I am now. So all of these things were familiar to me. But I realized that my memory was almost like a caricature of what happened and going deeper into it and getting like, what, what historically we now understand was just much more disturbing than I. I recalled in retrospect. So it's a very good book. He's a good reporter. It's won some awards. It is a sequel in a sense to an earlier book he did about the CIA. And I think if you're interested in the trajectory of America abroad, it is an interesting retrospective. I have two teams outside of the US that I will be rooting for and neither of them are Canada, although I would not be offended by Canada. That first trip I had to Italy that I talked about when I was coming home, I got stranded in the Netherlands for a day and it was during the World cup and I wound up in a hotel and I got room service and the guy that brought me my room service was from the Netherlands and the Netherlands was playing and he's like, turn it on. And he absconded on his job and spent probably 45 minutes with me in my room while I ate my cheeseburger, telling me about Netherlands football and all this. And it was very fun because he was into it and he was excited and he got me excited and, and he, you know, explained a lot to me and we had a good time. So I'm going to be cheering for the Netherlands along with New Zealand, my all my friends in New Zealand now. I'll be hoping that they make a, both make a good showing in this. So I'm in the end category this year.
- [54:23]
A
That's awesome. What about for you, Rick?
- [54:25]
C
The book I'm reading is the Troubles by Tim Pat Coogan, ironically, coincidentally, about the 30 year war in Northern Ireland and Ulster provinces between Catholics and Protestants. Although obviously much more complicated than all of that. And what it's reinforced for me is just the futility of war, even when you are right. And of course that's in the eye of the beholder and the heart of the people who are doing the fighting and who are suffering the damage. But war is so brutalizing and it brings out the absolute most demonic forces in people in society. And just again, coincidentally, two nights ago, the US army took over an abandoned hospital in our community and held nighttime urban warfare exercises, totally taking the city by surprise. I was informed in a text from a police chief, literally less than three hours before they started the flashbang grenades and the simulated gunfire and Ranger helicopters dropping troops onto the roof of this. And it is literally in a residential neighborhood across the street from what the fire, the eating fire was so devastating to our neighboring community of Altina and burned 130 homes in Pasadena. On two sides of this hospital we sustain homes and buildings burning to the ground. Right. And we're now in, we're now rebuilding some of those. And so the, the neighbors are putting up with daily construction moments. And then the US army put on this display of firepower in their neighborhood, first at 8pm and then at 1am and, and of course, you know, it has raised tremendous outrage, inevitably and appropriately. But again, the idea that war is the answer, you know, I'm sure some people shake their head, wow, bad people in the world. Yes, there are bad people in the world. And wars bring out the worst in every everybody. And, and there's a, there's a sense in which the current administration is at war with, with cities in our country. And that is just on a 250th birthday. It seems like the redcoats are our own government. And that is just such cognitive dissonance that we have to fear the King's army in our country. And these are our elected leaders. This country elected the current president and that's the way our system works. But it Seems like they turned the guns on, on us.
- [57:41]
A
What about your team?
- [57:43]
C
I'm going to root for Argentina. I have friends there. It's a country that's, that's speaking of own goals, right? It's, it's made some terrible mistakes politically over time and paid such a huge price. Still have not gotten over, you know, electing a dictator. You know, Juan Peron back in the 50s. And, and the, the echo of, of that experiment with Autoc never healed. And, and, and. But the Pope, the previous Pope, Pope Francis, you know, was an Argentine fanatic soccer fan. Illustrated a movie I would highly recommend the Two. The Two Popes. A completely fictional scene in which the movie ends where Pope Benedict and the future Pope Francis, after Benedict has resigned, are watching Germany play Argentina. It's a fabulous scene.
- [58:47]
B
It's a great movie. It's a great scene.
- [58:49]
C
Yeah, totally fictional, but nonetheless. But the Argentines are such fanatic fans and they have so little to cheer for. And one thing that unites the country and Buenos Aires is one of the most beautiful and urbane cities in the world and we could all learn from it.
- [59:13]
A
Well, I'll round things out in the down zone just with a quick endorsement of a show that I'm watching. Again, I'm rewatching it only Murders in the Building. I find it fascinating because in part, one of the main characters is the city. So it's set in New York. And one of the episodes they actually have to go out to Long island and you feel the shift occur as all of a sudden they go out into suburbia. And just the, the dynamics of that character now sort of imposing a new face really stands out, especially in the context of what we're talking about here. And in terms of rooting for teams, I've got a root for the Dutch simply because I am Dutch and my family background is there. But Curacao is coincidentally the smallest country. Only 158,000 people or 156,000 people live in Curacao. So they will be visiting cities that are larger than their nation and they will be representing their country with pride as one of the least likely qualifiers for the World cup, when nations like Italy didn't even make it. So very excited for that. We have covered a lot of ground. We're trying to do something where we're 14 host cities in the United States. And so all of the conversation has been sort of gearing up to have, like getting us all ready. And so if you are soccer curious, just go find a sports bar. You will fall in love with it or find room service with a Dutch waiter that will help you to really discover the delight of it. And with that, thanks folks for listening to Upzone. Thank you for being part of what we're doing here as we seek to build stronger communities that will endure forever. I appreciate it. Have a good rest of the day.
- [60:41]
B
Let me show you what I'm about to do.
- [60:45]
A
This this episode was produced by Strong Towns, a non profit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a strongtowns member@strongtowns.org membership.