McDonald’s has good hours, low priced food and ample seating. If any local coffee shop was open 6am to 10pm, had items that were less than $2, and could seat 40 people, it too would be the center of community. Kind of shocking how simple that formula is and how few places offer it.
Admittedly, that article is about Abundance, and yours names YIMBY, but I think they are close to the same conversation. Abundance is broader than YIMBY, but it also used YIMBY examples as it's core examples. As I argue in https://norabble.substack.com/p/is-abundance-elitist, this is an opportunity for more examples, not an exclusion.
I've always appreciated the ideas in Strong Towns, but I'm also drawn myself toward something bigger. I feel there are limits in the "human-scale" it advocates for, though I also appreciate the argument in the same way as I understand the suburbanite that wants a backyard, or a number of other preference sets.
The part I've not appreciated is the direction preference "enforcement". Despite the logic travelling in the other direction, the most least dense communities have tended to advocate most strongly against the creation of the denser places. They've often voiced this in terms as if they are threatened by the creation of denser places.
That just doesn't make sense though does it? The demands for space from the most dense places are least in conflict with the demands form the least. If you want to live with less density, you either need less people, or some group that lives in more density.
While this is illogical at the 10,000 foot view, it's not hard to see why the conflict occurs. The most dense places have value, and many places with moderately less density, and then even less density, tend to accumulate on their peripheries and surround them. For the most dense place to grow, it has to change some small part of this periphery and it's pretty universal that resistance to change needs a strong positive force to overcome rather than just a neutral force.
Skyscrapers aren't going to displace anything other than a tiny fraction of Strong Towns, anymore than Strong Towns can displace a fraction of single family suburbs, and neither will do any of that without people who appreciate the benefits of each. But, both can be blocked entirely if peripheries have total veto power.
To the people in the peripheries, this seems to make sense. I'm here and it's my property, shouldn't I be able to veto anyone changing it? But just a little reflection should show, it's not an accident that the peripheries are peripheries instead of isolated from the city. Since it's not an accident, they owe something to those cities. The ability to veto the cities growth, should never have been a presumption. If they aren't willing to accommodate dense areas growing, they shouldn't have built next to it. They shouldn't feel entitled to the benefits of proximity to a thing they'll deny others access to.
That said how hard can you argue against wanting your cake and eating it too an individual level? It only carries real power when you compare that allowing a higher density area to be built, it always fulfills more people's desires than blocking it.
Strong Towns is great, but it can be NIMBY too if it presumes the desires of those who'd be happy in the densest of places aren't valid.
McDonald’s genuinely serves everyone. It meets them where they are. It’s clean and safe and unpretentious. It offers pretty tasty food for a very low price.
Elites tend to turn their nose at things like McDonald’s as being too unhealthy or too consumerist, without stopping to appreciate how many people actually can’t afford $6 Lattes and organic Arugula, and don’t have the time to fix Whole 30 approved meals at home. McDonald’s doesn’t judge, it welcomes.
Architects, planners, engineers, and advocates would do well to learn from McDonald’s. To stop thinking of city life as a luxury good, and instead thinking about how to more humbly serve the community, to meet their actual needs.
McDonalds does serve everyone in the community but that does not make it a community. 70% of its sales are by drive thru and the average time spent at McDonalds is 3.5 minutes. The most you could probably say is that some people encounter others they know at McDonalds some of the time, mostly by seeing them in another car.
So I’m not sure of the lessons planners can derive from the example of McDonalds other than, as an institution, it serves food people want and is overwhelmingly dependent on cars. In places less dependent on cars, McDonalds and other chains have a lot more competition, often from independent eateries, businesses that tend to reflect community a bit better.
To me, the lesson from McDonalds is that if it represents community in our age, it is an anemic and joyless sort of gathering place, one which is primarily a function of car-centric development. If we hold McDonalds out as a model for community, we don’t care about community.
Chris Arnade was especially talking about what he's seen inside McDonald's across the country, particularly in those places that don't have any other option. These are places where, beyond its doors, community has collapsed.
But McDonald's is still popular in places that are otherwise doing well; yes, everyone drives there—but that's the point: they are choosing to drive there, not to some other restaurant, and not to some unbuilt, unplanned public space. What planners can learn is the nuts and bolts of what McDonald's does that makes it an attractive place to people to visit and linger in—wherever it is.
I quote Arnade's list of what those things are in the essay. Diana comments that its opening hours and prices are also a differentiator, which Andrew elaborates on his comment. I've also written about public spaces recently here:
Many elderly men meet up at McDonalds in the morning with their Veteran friends, or just a gathering of friends. I saw this almost daily when I lived in Wallingford. Not proud that I got a diet coke almost everyday, but that is what I observed.
It sounds like the growth of drive through sales subsidizes people who use McDonald’s as a third place. In earlier decades it was welcoming but explicitly designed to discourage people from staying a long time.
As i learn more about the Chinese Cities am slowly researching on, one thing is clear they are all backed by a 2200 year old history where some of the protocols are being applied to make the cities better
We know how to build and once in a while we show that. But the places you like didn't happen, can only barely happen, in the neo-liberal (or post-colonial or whatever you prefer to call it) economy that has been emerging over the past 50 years. McDonald's can be a gathering place (at least for the local MAGAs) because it can compete in a brutal economy. Building better gathering places (you can read about one in my next newsletter, out later today or tomorrow) will continue to be a struggle until we start de-monetizing what's important.
You don't think anybody monetized the historic downtowns of our most beloved cities? That they built the buildings for free, for no commercial purpose? The most delightful public spaces I've visited recently have all been monetized by the shops and retail that surround them and service them—being able to buy something to eat or drink is one of the things that makes a place worth lingering in! The problem in many American public spaces is that there's no monetization at all.
I sense some heat. Which is great. I read your newsletter because it is passionate. Of course no one built those buildings for free or fun. But a story for you from the first Gilded Age about why those buildings are where they are.
When Buffalo Bill founded his namesake city (Cody, WY, a place created from scratch, there wasn't even a trading post or a settler's cabin) he told his investors that the top priorities were a grand avenue suitable for parades and a park. Wily entrepreneur that BB was, he knew what leads. He didn't have to do much else (they also built a water system that never worked well and started a dam that Congress had to pay to finish) for commerce to follow.
Your visit to Providence was not to spaces created by the ugly capitalism of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump (Trump would prohibit any food or drink that his underpaid minions didn't sell you if he could). The first Gilded Age was no happier for working Americans than this one, really, but it did feature a sense of civic obligation that has been slowly vanishing since JFK was president.
We are taught that commerce leads, but unless you are thinking of a few semi-literate trappers who ended up preferring to marry into the tribes and stay, it was soldiers, paid for by tax dollars (you can read the account of how Lewis spent his funds down to the penny) who opened the West. Not that different than the food trucks following a public event to a public park as I describe in the newsletter I just posted.
The first thing we need to de-monetize is our mythology.
I certainly visited plenty of ugly spaces in Providence, but those were the result of mid-century urban highway construction and urban renewal, which both began long before Reagan or Trump got on the scene. Nor did either have anything to with the socialization of mortgages via interest rates subsidies going back to the Great Depression. I'm not sure how Buffalo Bill relates to the downtowns of our historic cities. Is your point that they were all built by con men? Or that he's a "neo-liberal" too?
My issue is with that framing: deploying "neo-liberal" is not an argument. Sneering at McDonald's as a MAGA hangout is not an argument—and it is anyway belied by the fact that I've observed local retirees in those restaurants pre-dating MAGA by at least 30 years, or French kids hanging out at one in Lyon last year. Using pejoratives to describe people you don't like is not an argument.
McDonald’s has good hours, low priced food and ample seating. If any local coffee shop was open 6am to 10pm, had items that were less than $2, and could seat 40 people, it too would be the center of community. Kind of shocking how simple that formula is and how few places offer it.
Flip it inside out and you've also got a model for how to manage a public square. Maybe add a ball pit, too!
In Canada, Tim Hortons is just such a coffee shop. Although, I guess you might say that it's not "local" - at least, not anymore.
It's local to the folks who go there, I bet!
It's good to hear this perspective, as I've seen some Strong Towns opinions that have trended toward looking for and focusing on incompatibilities (https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2025/6/9/the-trouble-with-abundance).
Admittedly, that article is about Abundance, and yours names YIMBY, but I think they are close to the same conversation. Abundance is broader than YIMBY, but it also used YIMBY examples as it's core examples. As I argue in https://norabble.substack.com/p/is-abundance-elitist, this is an opportunity for more examples, not an exclusion.
I've always appreciated the ideas in Strong Towns, but I'm also drawn myself toward something bigger. I feel there are limits in the "human-scale" it advocates for, though I also appreciate the argument in the same way as I understand the suburbanite that wants a backyard, or a number of other preference sets.
The part I've not appreciated is the direction preference "enforcement". Despite the logic travelling in the other direction, the most least dense communities have tended to advocate most strongly against the creation of the denser places. They've often voiced this in terms as if they are threatened by the creation of denser places.
That just doesn't make sense though does it? The demands for space from the most dense places are least in conflict with the demands form the least. If you want to live with less density, you either need less people, or some group that lives in more density.
While this is illogical at the 10,000 foot view, it's not hard to see why the conflict occurs. The most dense places have value, and many places with moderately less density, and then even less density, tend to accumulate on their peripheries and surround them. For the most dense place to grow, it has to change some small part of this periphery and it's pretty universal that resistance to change needs a strong positive force to overcome rather than just a neutral force.
Skyscrapers aren't going to displace anything other than a tiny fraction of Strong Towns, anymore than Strong Towns can displace a fraction of single family suburbs, and neither will do any of that without people who appreciate the benefits of each. But, both can be blocked entirely if peripheries have total veto power.
To the people in the peripheries, this seems to make sense. I'm here and it's my property, shouldn't I be able to veto anyone changing it? But just a little reflection should show, it's not an accident that the peripheries are peripheries instead of isolated from the city. Since it's not an accident, they owe something to those cities. The ability to veto the cities growth, should never have been a presumption. If they aren't willing to accommodate dense areas growing, they shouldn't have built next to it. They shouldn't feel entitled to the benefits of proximity to a thing they'll deny others access to.
That said how hard can you argue against wanting your cake and eating it too an individual level? It only carries real power when you compare that allowing a higher density area to be built, it always fulfills more people's desires than blocking it.
Strong Towns is great, but it can be NIMBY too if it presumes the desires of those who'd be happy in the densest of places aren't valid.
I 100% agree on the pairing of StrongTowns (a long time follower) & now also a YIMBY.
There is a brilliant book on some of this—Golden Arches East—that has been around for some years and referenced to me by Margaret Crawford. https://www.google.com/search?q=golden+arches+east&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari
I guess I'm still having trouble reconciling the two approaches. What actually is the lesson from McDonald's?
P.S. I really liked this article.
My personal takeaway:
McDonald’s genuinely serves everyone. It meets them where they are. It’s clean and safe and unpretentious. It offers pretty tasty food for a very low price.
Elites tend to turn their nose at things like McDonald’s as being too unhealthy or too consumerist, without stopping to appreciate how many people actually can’t afford $6 Lattes and organic Arugula, and don’t have the time to fix Whole 30 approved meals at home. McDonald’s doesn’t judge, it welcomes.
Architects, planners, engineers, and advocates would do well to learn from McDonald’s. To stop thinking of city life as a luxury good, and instead thinking about how to more humbly serve the community, to meet their actual needs.
100%!
MacDonalds iis for the Marjority the way cities are for the majority
It's that there are many approaches to creating community (three here!) and that modern planners aren't following any of them. Also: thank you!
McDonalds does serve everyone in the community but that does not make it a community. 70% of its sales are by drive thru and the average time spent at McDonalds is 3.5 minutes. The most you could probably say is that some people encounter others they know at McDonalds some of the time, mostly by seeing them in another car.
So I’m not sure of the lessons planners can derive from the example of McDonalds other than, as an institution, it serves food people want and is overwhelmingly dependent on cars. In places less dependent on cars, McDonalds and other chains have a lot more competition, often from independent eateries, businesses that tend to reflect community a bit better.
To me, the lesson from McDonalds is that if it represents community in our age, it is an anemic and joyless sort of gathering place, one which is primarily a function of car-centric development. If we hold McDonalds out as a model for community, we don’t care about community.
Chris Arnade was especially talking about what he's seen inside McDonald's across the country, particularly in those places that don't have any other option. These are places where, beyond its doors, community has collapsed.
But McDonald's is still popular in places that are otherwise doing well; yes, everyone drives there—but that's the point: they are choosing to drive there, not to some other restaurant, and not to some unbuilt, unplanned public space. What planners can learn is the nuts and bolts of what McDonald's does that makes it an attractive place to people to visit and linger in—wherever it is.
I quote Arnade's list of what those things are in the essay. Diana comments that its opening hours and prices are also a differentiator, which Andrew elaborates on his comment. I've also written about public spaces recently here:
https://www.ryanpuzycki.com/p/the-city-that-lingers
https://www.ryanpuzycki.com/p/bring-back-the-town
Many elderly men meet up at McDonalds in the morning with their Veteran friends, or just a gathering of friends. I saw this almost daily when I lived in Wallingford. Not proud that I got a diet coke almost everyday, but that is what I observed.
It sounds like the growth of drive through sales subsidizes people who use McDonald’s as a third place. In earlier decades it was welcoming but explicitly designed to discourage people from staying a long time.
As i learn more about the Chinese Cities am slowly researching on, one thing is clear they are all backed by a 2200 year old history where some of the protocols are being applied to make the cities better
We know how to build and once in a while we show that. But the places you like didn't happen, can only barely happen, in the neo-liberal (or post-colonial or whatever you prefer to call it) economy that has been emerging over the past 50 years. McDonald's can be a gathering place (at least for the local MAGAs) because it can compete in a brutal economy. Building better gathering places (you can read about one in my next newsletter, out later today or tomorrow) will continue to be a struggle until we start de-monetizing what's important.
You don't think anybody monetized the historic downtowns of our most beloved cities? That they built the buildings for free, for no commercial purpose? The most delightful public spaces I've visited recently have all been monetized by the shops and retail that surround them and service them—being able to buy something to eat or drink is one of the things that makes a place worth lingering in! The problem in many American public spaces is that there's no monetization at all.
I sense some heat. Which is great. I read your newsletter because it is passionate. Of course no one built those buildings for free or fun. But a story for you from the first Gilded Age about why those buildings are where they are.
When Buffalo Bill founded his namesake city (Cody, WY, a place created from scratch, there wasn't even a trading post or a settler's cabin) he told his investors that the top priorities were a grand avenue suitable for parades and a park. Wily entrepreneur that BB was, he knew what leads. He didn't have to do much else (they also built a water system that never worked well and started a dam that Congress had to pay to finish) for commerce to follow.
Your visit to Providence was not to spaces created by the ugly capitalism of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump (Trump would prohibit any food or drink that his underpaid minions didn't sell you if he could). The first Gilded Age was no happier for working Americans than this one, really, but it did feature a sense of civic obligation that has been slowly vanishing since JFK was president.
We are taught that commerce leads, but unless you are thinking of a few semi-literate trappers who ended up preferring to marry into the tribes and stay, it was soldiers, paid for by tax dollars (you can read the account of how Lewis spent his funds down to the penny) who opened the West. Not that different than the food trucks following a public event to a public park as I describe in the newsletter I just posted.
The first thing we need to de-monetize is our mythology.
I certainly visited plenty of ugly spaces in Providence, but those were the result of mid-century urban highway construction and urban renewal, which both began long before Reagan or Trump got on the scene. Nor did either have anything to with the socialization of mortgages via interest rates subsidies going back to the Great Depression. I'm not sure how Buffalo Bill relates to the downtowns of our historic cities. Is your point that they were all built by con men? Or that he's a "neo-liberal" too?
My issue is with that framing: deploying "neo-liberal" is not an argument. Sneering at McDonald's as a MAGA hangout is not an argument—and it is anyway belied by the fact that I've observed local retirees in those restaurants pre-dating MAGA by at least 30 years, or French kids hanging out at one in Lyon last year. Using pejoratives to describe people you don't like is not an argument.