NYU professor Arpit Gupta has channeled the annoyance of economists into a blog post directly calling out the Strong Towns “growth Ponzi scheme” line of argument. Like Arpit, I’ve never found a clear accounting for the Strong Towns argument. The basic evidence, as Arpit shows, is in the opposite direction.
Strong Towns does good work and I was a dues-paying member for several years. But their argument against low-density growth is well into its second decade and is being spread widely enough to be taken seriously, which means asking hard questions and demanding rigorous accounting.
If Strong Towns or other Ponzi-supporters can’t bring the receipts, they can still retreat to some better-defended heights:
- Growth may hurt central cities and inner-ring suburbs left behind by decamping residents and commerce;
- Throwing tax subsidies at growth is usually a bad idea;
- Growth may be fiscally unsustainable in a place where population is not growing; or
- The federal tax-and-spending system is biased in favor of new construction.
But a retreat is a retreat. If Strong Towns falls back on these positions, the general “bailey” claim that “suburban growth is a Ponzi scheme” is torched.
