Automated vehicle technology will do nothing to make our streets better places to be.
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Two simple questions can help us understand why different groups don’t seem to speak the same language about growth and development in cities, and why seemingly-strange political alliances form around these issues.
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This week on the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck discusses the role of planning in correcting for legacies of segregation and inequality. Is more enlightened policy enough to change course? Or do we need to more fundamentally rethink who has the power to shape cities?
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"Developers in my city are only building luxury housing. They're not building anything that ordinary people can afford." If you’ve said this lately, or heard someone else say it, here are five possible reasons why.
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Tragedy predictably occurs when our road designs combine high speeds and randomness.
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In the past two weeks, we’ve re-run some of our best content of 2018, and explored new topics including how to know when your town is ready for a parking garage; how to double your city’s bus ridership through a smart, iterative strategy; a novel intersection design for people on foot; why cities work better when we tolerate imperfection; the value (or lack thereof) of a planning certification; and more!
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As a cycling advocate, I avoid talking about the times when riding a bike in the city is scary, because I don’t want to deter would-be new riders from giving it a try. There’s only one problem with pretending I’m never afraid: it isn’t true.
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Kea Wilson shares her five favorite Strong Towns-adjacent reads (and one favorite watch) of the year. From the short works of Jane Jacobs to a nonfiction epic about Americans who live out of their cars, and more!
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The most important thing for a local government is to avoid ruin.
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Gentrification and concentrated poverty are two sides of the same coin. We’ve engineered our cities so that neighborhoods get either too much investment or too little: the trickle or the fire hose.
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If granting exceptions to your city’s planning rules is so common as to have become the norm, perhaps it’s time to reconsider the rules themselves.
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It is the experiences of real people that should guide our planning efforts. Their actions are the data we should be collecting, not their stated preferences.
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In this episode of our podcast It’s the Little Things, Jacob chats with Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn about how you can get ideas for making your neighborhood stronger, including how both the concerned citizen and the public official can act on ideas, how to share them with your tribe, and how to take the next incremental step in making your neighborhood stronger.
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Here are a few ideas to make you a more effective—and interesting—public hearing participant.
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If Strong Towns is successful—really successful—you won't hear about it, because the vast majority of the change we produce won't be attributed to us at all. It will be embedded in the broader culture.
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3 dollars and cents arguments that definitively prove the need for people-oriented, walk-friendly places.
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Innovative models from around the country address homelessness by starting with small, inexpensive, and imperfect solutions. What can Akron, Ohio learn from these examples?
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Today we're bringing you the video—and audio, if that’s more your jam—from the latest edition of our live, bimonthly ask-us-anything webcast, Ask Strong Towns.
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A few weeks ago, Amazon announced major new operations in not one, but three locations: Queens, NYC; Crystal City, near Washington, DC; and Nashville. Our biggest question is not for Amazon but for the cities and states that offered them massive subsidy packages: Why?!
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I don’t know why I’m an certified planner anymore. More importantly, it’s not clear to me why the world will be a better place if I am.
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