Public Space Done Right

I spent some time last week in Rapid City, SD. Rapid City (pop. 70,000) is a regional hub with medical and educational offerings. It also has a robust tourism economy with Mount Rushmore and Sturgis being nearby. However, like many communities, its downtown had fallen into neglect over time.

Read More
Top StoryJason Schaefer
Dream Big, but Plan Small

St. Paul's River Balcony project is a refreshingly incremental and promising approach to creating new public space and reconnecting the city's downtown with the Mississippi River. It has the potential to demonstrate the power of pragmatic planning in small steps toward a grand vision.

Read More
Herriges, Top StoryDaniel Herriges
Built to the MAX

One of my favorite podcast episodes, and one I go back to fairly often, is Strong Towns Talking Transit. It was an off-site panel discussion during Railvolution.

A major theme from that discussion was that a good transit project connects productive places. I’ve been thinking about that insight a great deal this past week. 

Read More
Top StoryJason Schaefer
The Service of Burn

Can we ever design a city devoid of the suffering and loss we've always experienced? I suppose the answer makes little difference in my resolve to minimize the hurt. But studying the forest does make me question the city - what is truly a problem and what is simply a feedback or system within a system.

Read More
Top StoryGracen Johnson
In Dogma We Trust

We all have biases and we all have reflexive reactions to some statements and situations. That's human. As Strong Towns advocates, let's resist the human impulse to dogma first and think later. We need to keep our minds open to the great ideas that an incremental, chaotic-but-smart approach can reveal.

Read More
Marketing Urban Design

Educating people on urban design is like the challenge of teaching Daniel-san, of the original Karate Kid movie, the intricacies of martial arts. While Daniel-san expects to immediately learn how to fight the Cobra Kai, Mr Miyagi insists on learning to wax the car and paint the fence properly before even throwing a punch. Likewise, showing someone a transect of a complete street can be frustrating for a normal person to understand.

Read More
Top StoryBrandon Castillo