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farther away from their cores, and when that sprawl becomes decrepit, the answer is always to just build more infrastructure. Marohn expounded upon those views at length Tuesday night at The Francis in down- town Sarasota — using historic photos from his hometown of Brainerd, MN, to illustrate how the mass availability of the automobile has dramatically changed how our cities are organized. For thousands of years, Marohn argued, people around the world slowly per- fected the art of city planning, and then within a few generations abandoned it. Strong Towns, the organization that eventu- ally grew from Marohn's blogging, has taken a hard look at the tax revenues generated by different types of development and the results are startling. Marohn showed an overhead view of a brand-new big box store built on the outskirts of Brainerd side-by-side with an overhead view of a largely decrepit and dis- used section of the old downtown. The big box store generates $600,000 in revenue per acre. That rundown urban area pumps out $1.1 million. From a city budget standpoint, traditional downtowns are "vastly more productive" than suburban projects, Marohn concluded. "In our rush to grab the elusive dollar on the edge, we're literally stepping over the nickels and dimes waiting there to be picked up." And the effect can be drastic. Marohn dis- cussed cities such as Detroit and Memphis that rate high in "despair statistics" and how their planning decisions have gutted their communities. Memphis' abandoned Pyramid Arena. Photo by Thomas R. Machnitzki, via Wikimedia Commons Sarasota News Leader March 21, 2014 Page 53