How can we best invest cheap money? With a Strong Towns approach to debt centered on true investments which pay a measurable return and legitimate cash flow in a city that understands its true balance sheet.
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The German verb spritzen apparently means "to squirt" in English. The Marohn side of the family had some Prussian ancestry and that is also the side that did Spritz, although the Norwegian side of my family also produced some. I read somewhere that spritz cookies also have Scandinavian roots, but does it matter? They are so tasty.
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The Monday Member Blogroll brought to you by Jesse Bailey.
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Our urban areas need to be redesigned around a new set of values, one that doesn’t seek to accommodate bikers and pedestrians within an auto-dominated environment but instead does the opposite: accommodates automobiles in an environment dominated by people. It is people that create value. It is people that build wealth. It is in prioritizing their needs – whether on foot, on a bike or in a wheelchair – that we will begin to change the financial health of our cities and truly make them strong towns.
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Get yourself a tray of Strong Towns treats and help us with some important work in the process.
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How many fender benders equals one life?
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Get a massive tray of Chuck's homemade cookies while you help us share the Strong Towns message by finishing the Curbside chat video series.
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Texting while driving is a very real problem. The cause of the problem, however, isn’t recklessness but an incorrect perception of safety on behalf of drivers who feel little risk in texting. We can write all the anti-distracted driving laws we want but, at best, we will only displace the problem, replacing texting with some other distraction. To really address this problem, we need to be willing to incorporate driver psychology, including risk response, into our engineering approach.
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Andrew Burleson and Jim Kumon join Chuck Marohn to look at where the Strong Towns movement is today and the shape it may take in the coming years.
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Huge props to Mark Sowers who sent me his research and analysis of #blackfridayparking. He nailed it.
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Amazingly, the Strong Towns Podcast is fast approaching its 200th episode, a milestone worth stopping to acknowledge.
We're asking you to help us with Show #200 by submitting your questions for Chuck to answer.
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Church leaders around the country should be doing everything they can to reconnect the social bonds of our communities. We reconnect the social bonds most easily and effectively when we reconnect the physical bonds. We should be obsessed with getting people out of their cars and back into each other’s lives.
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We may have a transportation funding problem, but that’s not what is going to take us down. Our real problem is that we have not had to think about what we are doing for a long, long time. We’ve been so wealthy and affluent that funding the most bizarre transportation arrangement on earth became akin to the American way of life. Congestion-free roadways and ample parking are to the United States what bread and circuses were to Rome. Get out your fiddle, that smoke is real.
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Cities are complex places. We need to embrace the complexity, and the difficult and sometimes painful feedback that comes along with it, if we want our cities to grow strong and resilient. Best of Blog 2014.
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Seth Zeren provides this week's version of the Monday Member News Digest, a look at the blog posts written this past week by Strong Towns members.
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This week's Friday News Digest is coming to you from Tulsa, OK, where the city's mayor has decided to unilaterally remove from plans a sidewalk along Riverside Drive leading to "A Gathering Place for Tulsa" -- a world-class park under construction and valued at more than $350 million, the largest gift to a public park in U.S. history.
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Jim Kumon joins Chuck Marohn to discuss the Strong Towns Strength Test and how it can be applied to measure the strength and resiliency of a place.
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For municipalities that want to become Strong Towns, here’s a ranked list of the highest impact actions that would help restore a productive development pattern. This is a generic list, not tailored to any specific community, but the actions on this list would apply to the majority of US towns.
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I can't watch this video of Andrew Price deliver Place versus non-Place at the National Gathering without getting a huge smile on my face. Andrew is one of the more brilliant people I've met yet has a humble and understated approach that fits him, and Strong Towns, perfectly. We are so thankful for his participation here and this presentation that rocked the house at the National Gathering.
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