We have come to see the stagnation and decline of our blocks and neighborhoods as a normal part of the development process. It is not. The normal course of human development is for successful cities to mature incrementally over time. When that occurs, they become financially resilient. To build Strong Towns, a community's emphasis needs to shift from creating growth quickly and easily to building value in a broad and incremental way.

In May of 2000, I took my first trip out of the country. Having grown up in a small town in Central Minnesota, I had seen quite a bit of the United States (excluding major cities, which my parents avoided) but had no idea what a country like Italy was going to be like. In fact, in my naivete, I probably assumed it would look at lot like the United States with a few more churches and some Roman ruins here and there. The truth is, while I had pondered a different culture, it had not occurred to me that the very place would be so different.

As we flew into Milan, someone said we could see the city outside the window. Milan is one of the major cities of Europe — a cosmopolitan capital — but when I looked out my window, I didn't see it. Where were the skyscrapers? Where were the highways? The stadium? None of the landmarks I had grown accustomed to seeing in major U.S. cities were visible. Everything just seemed so short.

I'll spare you the story of my awakening, from engineer to planner to Strong Towns advocate, but simply note that this flight into Milan was a major turning point in that story. It took me years of reflection and many trips to the neighborhoods of Milan, Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin and London, not to mention dozens of small towns throughout Italy, France, England and Ireland, to piece it all together. What I was seeing for the first time in Milan was a city that had progressed through centuries of development. I was looking at a place that had matured.

Last week I polarized our pleasant conversation here by writing the following:

Tax Increment Financing (TIF) is the devil's tool of decline. There are two things necessary to make it "work" (and by "work" I mean as a way to corrupt your community's soul). First, the city must reconfigure as much of the community as possible in an auto centric manner so as to make it very advantageous to develop on bare ground on the edge of town. Then — and these work together — the city needs to continue policies that devalue neighborhoods to the point where decent commercial or residential activity is no longer viable.

And later in the same piece I wrote:

As a final note, readers should know that to grant TIF an application must pass a "but for" test. "But for" the TIF subsidy, this redevelopment wouldn't happen. When you get beyond the immediate transaction and understand the full picture of what is going on, you realize that this is a little like an alcoholic hitting the bottle and saying, "but for...." TIF is the co-dependent enabler of the suburban experiment.

Why don't we have a Milan here in the United States? Easier still, why don't we have a Stresa (Italy, population 5,000) or an Avignon (France, population 95,000), two cities of immense beauty, character and, I am quite certain, financially able to maintain their basic infrastructure? Years ago, I would have believed it was because our cities were younger and had not had the time these great towns of Europe had. Then I came across this picture of my hometown of Brainerd and realized what had happened.

Everything you see in that picture from 1894 is now gone. In its place are a bunch of parking lots, abandoned buildings and very low rent, marginal establishments. As James Howard Kunstler wrote me once in an email, my hometown — like so many other American cities — simply committed suicide.

It was self-inflicted damage, but injury was not the intention. The goal was growth. At Strong Towns we've discussed fairly thoroughly the illusion of wealth our development pattern creates and the workings of the Growth Ponzi Scheme. Today I want to describe what a normal, healthy pattern of development looks like. We'll focus on commercial districts and look at residential neighborhoods later in the week.

Start with the earliest settlement. In the case of my hometown of Brainerd, this photo was taken in 1870. For those with local knowledge, this is Front Street. The sign on the clearest building reads, "Billiard Hall." This is a place in its infancy.