The Strong Towns Podcast From Service Cuts To Understanding City Insolvency
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Mar 23, 2026 Michel Durand-Wood, author and civic commentator who writes on municipal finance, describes realizing cities can be structurally insolvent. He discusses how service cuts and rising costs revealed deeper fiscal design problems. They cover urban form, infrastructure burdens like roads and pipes, the limits of efficiency fixes, and small, local actions that nudge long-term financial resilience.
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See City Finances As A Flow Problem Not Line Items
- The growth Ponzi scheme reframes municipal problems by focusing on systemic fund flows instead of isolated budget line items.
- Michel Durand-Wood credits Strong Towns' idea of zooming out to see where new infrastructure costs outpace revenue, which revealed insolvency patterns.
Defeat On Pedestrian Vote Sparked Dear Winnipeg
- A citywide 67% vote against reopening a 40-year closed downtown intersection pushed Michel to start the Dear Winnipeg blog.
- That defeat convinced him people lacked awareness and motivated grassroots education about municipal finance.
Finance Is The Connective Tissue Of City Policy
- Specialists in city departments produce detailed transparency but miss the big-system signals that reveal insolvency risks.
- Michel argues finance is the connective tissue that reveals how transit, housing, and services fit together at city scale.
