Marohn: "We built places that rocked back when we had to build them to be financially sound."

"Chuck Marohn, the executive director of Strong Towns, explains the difference between a road, which is a connection to two places and a street, which is a network of activity. He stresses the importance of returning roads to towns for community and economic development."

In the process, Marohn does a nice of job of explaining how the government driven dominance of automobile-centric development has led to unsustainable economic inefficiencies and the breakdown of our social fabric.

Anyone advocating on behalf of the Ohio River Bridges Project or just about any other massive, in-town road (rather than street) building project under the guise of economic development, social good, or the free market is simply ignorant - and perhaps purposefully so - of our history, both impetuses and outcomes. They are rallying in favor of debt, the unneeded and unwise prostration of locals to volatile international financial markets, and a model that extracts rather than enhances the value of place for a majority of regional citizens.

Interstates and highways were meant to connect places over long distances, something they're sometimes actually good at. When we make them the centerpiece of local development, however, we've missed the point entirely, resigning ourselves to the sort of disrespect for and loss of previous investment and work from which it's difficult to recover.