How Strong Towns Principles Relate to Sioux Falls — Incremental Development
- based on “Strong Towns — A Bottom-Up Revolution To Rebuild American Prosperity” by Charles L. Marohn, Jr.
“Complex, adaptive systems grow incrementally. That is the method they use to simultaneously harmonize multiple competing interests, to learn — through experimentation — what truly works and what doesn’t.” — Chuck Marohn
In the previous article in this series, we talked about complex versus complicated city building models. Complex city building uses incremental development patterns while complicated development uses a “built as finished” model. Let’s talk about that first.
Examples of built as finished developments are fast food restaurants with their own parking lot, malls with big box stores and a huge parking lot and residential developments where all the units, streets and infrastructure are built by a developer who then sells the finished units in the finished neighborhood to potential homeowners. These developments require big infrastructure commitments by city taxpayers. And because they are built as finished, the only way for them to go is down. When the fast-food restaurant closes, it may be so specialized that it is not easy for another business to use the building. It may sit empty for a few years and then be torn down so that the site can be redeveloped — possibly with more infrastructure costs to taxpayers. As we write this there are several fast-food restaurants along Minnesota Avenue that are closed. This offers us a good opportunity to see what happens when this type of built as finished development fails.
But the real problem with this type of development is that it does not create enough tax revenue to pay for replacing the infrastructure it uses when that infrastructure reaches the end of its life cycle. The tax revenue per acre for these large, spread-out developments is much less than in compact, intense urban developments that make better use of infrastructure investments. Many cities are insolvent because they have not collected enough tax revenue to pay for the infrastructure replacement costs that are now coming due.
Marohn has a good example in his book of the discrepancy in tax revenue from built as finished development and incremental development. In his hometown of Brainerd, MN, there are two identical sized blocks that are only one block apart. One block has a circa 1920 collection of small one and two-story buildings with a variety of small businesses. The other block has a Taco John fast food restaurant taking up the whole block. It has plenty of parking, nice landscaping, etc. It has a tax value per acre that is about 44% less than the old, neglected block! The old block has been hampered by the Great Depression and then the shift to the current development model after WWII yet it still produces more value for the city. It is an example of incremental development which we will talk about next.
You see examples of incremental development in the older areas along Phillips and Main Avenues in Sioux Falls and in small towns like Dell Rapids. A typical building in these areas measures about 20’ x 80’ and usually has a basement and two floors. The first floor can be used for many things like a hardware store, bar, cafe or clothing store. The upper floors could have offices or apartments. They were built side by side on the first street in town so they could all use the same infrastructure like water lines. When the stores were all occupied and there was a need for more space a new building was built next to the existing buildings or a smaller one-story building could be turned into a two-story building. The town grew up and out in small, pay as you go chunks. That is incremental development.
Incremental development is a complex system because it is driven by the complex interactions of the people in the existing neighborhood. The wants and needs of the neighborhood largely determine what gets built next. If a business in these compact areas fails it usually won’t shut down the whole neighborhood. Someone else will come in and start a new business in the available space. No additional infrastructure is needed. The neighborhood maintains its tax value per acre and can pay for the infrastructure it needs because it needs less infrastructure.
Thinking of cities as complicated may lead us to build infrastructure-heavy developments on the edge of town because we think we can predict what will happen. However, thinking of cities as complex will lead us to build small incremental developments because we know we can’t predict what will happen. If the small development fails, it is easier to adapt and move on.
Want to check out the book? Buy it here.
