This one’s on you, engineering profession. Society is done tolerating this level of indifference, incompetence and incoherence. What are you going to do?
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This week we are highlighting the intellectual contributions of some of our members. Hans Noeldner, our good friend, a biking/walking advocate from Wisconsin, gave a presentation at the National Gathering called Feet First, a vision that emerging from his existential angst (where many inspired ideas come from). Hans has been instrumental in spreading the Strong Towns message throughout Wisconsin and we're very thankful for that.
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Strong Citizen Challenge: Bring a plate of goodies to your neighbor.
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This week we are going to highlight some of our members and their great contributions to the Strong Towns dialog. We start with Jesse Bailey, blogger at Walkable WPB, regular contributor in this space and self-proclaimed "zealous nut". Jesse was also a big part of helping us pull off the #BlackFridayParking event last week. We love him.
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Happy Monday-After-Thanksgiving, everyone! We are officially in the time of year when everyone gets a little more rotund and (hopefully) a bit more cheerful. This is the turkey-coma installment of the Strong Towns Monday Member Blog Roll!
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The problem with modern capitalism is that there are not enough capitalists. We need a system that encourages diverse ownership of capital if we want to build and support the middle-class.
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Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, a holiday whose name suggests a time for deep reflection. If you're struggling with all of this like me, the day couldn't come at a better time.
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Pretty much everything we talk about in our corner of the city-building world is correcting for the wreckage left by auto-domination. Driverless cars could potentially change the auto-culture and role of vehicles in our lives. What kind of impact might this have on the priorities and approaches of Strong Citizens?
Maybe this driverless talk is just hype and I'm speaking in extreme hypotheticals. But I think it's worth asking: if motorized transportation were cheaper, easier, more pleasant and convenient than ever - if it were electrified to boot, where do we stand?
Do driverless cars actually make any difference to a Strong Town?
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Once again, the Infrastructure Cult's narrative was picked up and magnified by the old media. This past weekend, 60 Minutes (yes, that is still a show) ran a piece called Falling Apart: America's Neglected Infrastructure. It contained all of the Cult's usual talking points.
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This coming Tuesday, November 25 is our next Strong Towns webinar. As you may have seen over social media and the blog, we have a new presentation and initiative called Transportation in the Next American City. It has been in beta test over the last two months and now we want your feedback.
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Welcome to Monday and the recap of the past week of member content. Lots of great content about suburbs, starting out with Next STL.
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Join us this Friday for #blackfridayparking, a nationwide event to draw attention to the ridiculousness of minimum parking requirements.
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Chuck is on his way back from sunny Austin this morning, so I’ll be bringing you the FND. It's also my first one, so be gentle, will ya?
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In my work with Lafayette, I had shared with me a nice supplementary approach from the city of Suwanee, Georgia, that can be used while a full accounting is being done. It is a scoring matrix that does a rough -- but very smart -- scoring in a true Strong Towns spirit.
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Engineer and shared-space designer Ben Hamilton-Baillie returns to the podcast to talk about how to get started with building shared space, the chances of success in the United States and some memories of his father, a World War II veteran who lead and assisted a number of escapes from German prisoner-of-war camps.
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Last week I shared on our social media feeds a story from The Week titled, It's time to abolish the Interstate Highway System, by Evan Jenkins. It was a bad headline -- the article doesn't suggest we go out and tear down the interstates but that we shift the way we fund it -- but most writers don't get to pick their own headlines.
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I read your blogs regarding cities being primarily sales tax funded. My question is how do you move away from that model? Given the property tax nose dive in our area in 2008 is property tax really a viable alternative? Are there other options? Thanks!
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Strong Towns member and Senior Planner at the city of Hutto, Texas, Erika Ragsdale, needed to share some complex information on the productivity of different development patterns in her fast-growing community. Here is what she came up with.
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Here are ten simple questions we call the Strong Towns Strength Test. A Strong Town should be able to answer “yes” to each of these questions.
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