Today is my 55th and final event in the Strong America Tour. I feel as if I’m limping across the finish line as I’ve caught a terrible cold and my voice is nearly gone. Even so, I’m committed to a strong finish at my favorite university—the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis—where I’ll be speaking this evening.

Last night in Duluth we had a great conversation, part of which included a version of the familiar thread: “They just don’t build things like they used to.” I’m writing this from the living room of my 1914 craftsman home, so obviously I am sympathetic to the notion that there is a quality bonus to the way we used to build, but I think it’s important to point out some nuance in that observation.

I’m fond of showing a photo of the original 1870 version of my hometown. It was a series of cheap, popup shacks arranged in a row, the first iteration of what would become my downtown. The important observation here is that these were really cheap buildings. They were designed to be a little bet, something that would be improved or replaced in short order if things worked out. Applying the “they don’t build things like they used to” mantra at this phase of development yields a different take. Yeah, they don’t build them like that anymore: They build them of much higher quality.

This may sound good—of course we want higher quality housing—until you ponder the growing number of people sleeping under bridges and in public parks. We were in California last week where there is a homelessness epidemic. For compassionate reasons, we’ve made the entry level housing product of higher quality today than in the past (for example: California is now requiring solar panels on many new homes). The result is that many people can’t reach that high standard, and so their choice isn’t between a larger home and a small, popup shack; it’s either a larger home or the streets.

Ironically, while we’ve raised the bar on the entry-level product, we’ve dramatically lowered the bar on the mid-level. Most single-family homes today are built of cheap, throw-away material that quickly falls apart once it reaches the end of its life cycle. That applies to residential as well as commercial construction. It’s too expensive to tear down and replace, but too cheap to last.

In the article we’re sharing here as one of our “best of” for 2019, I tried to expand on Steve Mouzon’s insights about places needing to be lovable. If we don’t love a place, we will struggle to take care of it. As you reread this piece, keep in mind that “lovable” does not mean “expensive” or even “high-quality.” That 1870’s row of popup shacks was loved by the people there, perhaps only for its potential to become something else, but loved nonetheless.

At their theme parks, Walt Disney—which I discuss in this article—routinely builds things that are cheap and meant to go away in short order. The timelessness comes from the design and the attention to detail, not from the quality or perceived permanence of the construction.

If we grasp the critical role of maintenance and are able to make it the priority, we can start to explore the real meaning of “quality” in city-building, realizing that it not only trumps quantity, it actually is more important than durability, perceived permanence, and (especially) the gizmo fads of solar panels and the like.

No community lacks the resources to build a Strong Town. That should give us all hope for the future.