What Does Effective Urban Advocacy Actually Look Like?

There’s a troubling narrative out there that you can only get things done in your community if you’re in public office, or by otherwise working through official, formal channels. But this is simply not true.

Sam Quinones: Recovering Addicts Are Having a Bottom-Up Revolution in This Small Kentucky Town

Sam Quinones returns to the Strong Towns Podcast to discuss a recent, moving article he’s written about Hazard, KY, a small town that was hit hard by the decline of coal mining and the rise of the opioid epidemic.

Podcast, Top StoryStrong TownsMarch 4, 2024podcast, kentucky, bottom-up, small towns

Citizen Versus Developer? No! It’s Citizen As Developer.

On this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck delves into the topic of citizen-led development and its potential to reshape cities in a more financially resilient manner.

Build Galesburg for People, Not Cars

Galesburg, IL, is talking about Strong Towns ideas, centered around a question that many Strong Towns readers are familiar with: “Is our downtown built for cars instead of people?”

For Those Who Wish We’d Talk About Climate Change More

Progress on climate change can and will come if we use a bottom-up approach to changing our development pattern.

Here’s Why We Respond in Force to One Amtrak Crash While Ignoring Thousands of Daily Car Crashes

A top-down approach to addressing accidents fails to make streets safer. A local approach could change that.

Local Control or Centralized Planning? There’s a Third Answer.

The problems with "community input" are many and obvious. One misguided response is to favor more top-down policy making, simply overriding the objections of local "NIMBYs." But there is a third way.