TEDx Video: What makes for a strong town?
In March 2019, Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn was invited to give a TEDx talk in Washington, D.C. Two years later, the recording of the talk is now available online. Just 14 minutes long, the video is an excellent introduction to the work thousands of Strong Towns advocates like you are doing all across North America. Will you help us grow the movement by sharing it with friends, family, colleagues, and local city staff?
In his talk, Chuck addresses the famous quote by architect Daniel Burnham: “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood…” Those words have inspired generations of architects, engineers, and planners. Yet Burnham, who died in 1912, perhaps couldn’t have foreseen the consequences of the big plans 20th-century city-builders would come up with: aggressive horizontal expansion, building whole neighborhoods all at once and to a finished state, and massive infrastructure projects the maintenance of which are now a millstone for city budgets. In other words, the Suburban Experiment.
Decades of big plans have created big problems for our cities. But “great problems,” as Wendell Berry has written, “call for many small solutions.” Here at Strong Towns, we believe the way to build stronger and more resilient towns and cities is incrementally (making many small bets over time), iteratively (gathering and responding to feedback), humbly (putting yourself in your neighbor’s shoes to see where they struggle), and collaboratively (working with neighbors to address that struggle). And that’s exactly what literally thousands of Strong Towns advocates like you are doing around the U.S. and Canada.
Thank you for the important work you are doing, and thank you for letting us be a part of it.
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