Comment by jrjeksjd8d

TFA seems to claim that the benefits of "nice buildings" outweigh the externalities of desolate, character-less street levels in cities. It doesn't seem very on brand for Strong Towns.

This phenomenon is going on in the downtown of my city - decreased foot traffic leads to tenants leaving, and the cycle continues. It's a miserable place to live or work that basically becomes a ghost town at 5pm. They're trying to do some office-to-residential conversions, but they're not very desirable because the entire neighborhood feels hollow and abandoned.

Instead of delaying these defaults and accumulating systemic risk until there's a massive correction, someone should be enforcing accounting that marks to market the actual rental value. That would force banks to be honest about the real level of risk on their balance sheets.