What people are saying

Member Edward Erfurt (left) and our Executive Director Jim Kumon are helping Strong Towns push the boundaries. DO NOT STAND but run to your computer and sign up.This week we are trying to add fifty new members to the Strong Towns movement. If you are not already a member, please consider becoming one today.

We’d like to thank the eight who joined on Monday, including Lisa Nisenson, Corey Newcomb, Sherry Wilkins, Karen Allen, John Chilson, Mike Christensen, Karen Allen and Michael Lewyn.

All of the work we do here at Strong Towns is licensed through Creative Commons for free sharing and adapting, even for commercial use. We are trying hard to get this message out there in whatever format works. We encourage people to take what we do and use it to make their cities, towns and neighborhoods into strong places. Many have.

To that end, I want to share with you some testimonials I’ve received in recent weeks. The feedback is overwhelming and humbling but I share it with you to give you a sense of the impact we are having, the efforts we are asking you to support.

I want to thank you for your excellent report Curbside Chat, about the Ponzi scheme that is urban sprawl/growth and ‘development.’ In over 30 years of being in the environmental planning and land conservation fields, I have not seen a publication make as elegant and compelling an argument against conventional sprawl development as this one does.

- Margo S.

Chuck presentation was transparent – no hidden agendas.  His message of getting away from this Post WWII experiment of building it and they will come simply because it is new and larger, has failed. Point made loud and clear with just three slides of his hometown. I also like the name he has given this vision  – ‘strong towns’ – I think it resonates with people in a more visceral way than the term ‘smart growth’ ever did.

- Victoria D.

The genius of Chuck’s approach, or one of the several different strands of genius in his approach, is that he is in favor of economic stewardship rather than a NIMBY or someone who opposes sprawl on aesthetic or selfish or ideological grounds.

- David B.

I've heard Chuck Marohn speak twice now. I'm a little envious because he so eloquently organizes the sentiments that many of us have been trying to express since both the disaster that was urban renewal and the dawn of the first modern energy crisis 40 years ago. He's even been known to compare our post war development model to a Ponzi scheme. He's neither a radical nor an idiot for ideology, just a well balanced recovering engineer.

- Kevin M.

While tens of thousands of different people read our blog and listen to our podcast each month, only a very small percentage – less than 1% -- actually support what we do by becoming members. That’s okay – we know not everyone will join the movement – but it means that we need a core group of committed people helping us see this through. We’re trying to find 50 more of you this week. Please take a moment and sign up to be a member

Charles Marohn