Just FWIW, the Strong Towns team would mostly agree with what you're saying.[1] Chuck would liken spending public money on things that don't have a measurable

Just FWIW, the Strong Towns team would mostly agree with what you're saying.[1] Chuck would liken spending public money on things that don't have a measurable return on investment to "ice cream." There's room for ice cream in life. The problem is when its your entire diet. What we're more worried about is that cities are losing so much money on bad investments that they're increasingly unable to afford "bread and butter," let alone ice cream. And to be clear, as a response to this problem Strong Towns doesn't advocate stopping all spending/investment, but rather to take a careful approach that seeks to invest in things that produce a return, so the city will have more resources over time, so that there's money to pay for ice cream :) I understand why you might get your impression though. Strong Towns content mostly is a blog stream and you can read a lot of it without getting the entire picture. Chuck's book is coming out pretty soon [2], and I think that'll help. The book boils down the entire Strong Towns "philosophy" (if you will) into something you can read in a day. [1] Source: I'm on the board. [2] https://www.strongtowns.org/strongamerica https://www.strongtowns.org/strongamerica