Things have gone awry as Rachel takes a Monday off leaving Chuck and Strong Towns' Community Builder, Yuri Artibise, to talk about Iowa, the barbell strategy, the Canadian-based CitiesAlive podcast and the differing histories of the War of the Conquest (the French and Indian War).
Read MoreWe never calculate—let alone track—the public's actual return-on-investment (dollars in versus dollars out over multiple life cycles) when we do a project. We never even ask the question.
Read MoreMost of our investments need to be riskless, but a small fraction need to be high risk, high reward.
Read MoreHere's our most-read content from the week at Strong Towns.
Read MoreWe're bringing back our See It Differently TV (SID.TV) series on YouTube. In this new short video, Chuck Marohn shows us how a hospital parking lot offers both challenges and opportunities for the surrounding neighborhood.
Read MoreThis is a home and a destination, not a place to pass through quickly on your way to somewhere else. The streets should be designed to reflect that.
Read MoreYes, many thriving places have attractive lawn furniture, tasteful signage, and abundant flowers. But adding those items to a place with fundamental flaws is just lipstick on a pig.
Read MoreThese places all have many of the physical elements needed for success, quite frankly, because they were built for it originally. What they need most is people; people that care about the place and have the energy to make it better.
Read MoreBrian Ludicke is a planning director and Strong Towns member working to make his city of Lancaster, CA more walkable and more livable for everyone.
Read MoreRed light cameras are not the answer.
Read MoreTwo weeks ago, we announced a crowdsourced database collecting information on the tax productivity of big box stores in comparison with other, more compact developments. We've now mapped that data for you to see.
Read MoreMayor Steve Arnold of Fitchburg, WI is a Strong Towns member who is asking the hard questions about road funding and exposing the Growth Ponzi Scheme in his town. Unsurprisingly, it's a contentious conversation.
Read MoreIt might not be the answer you're expecting.
Read MoreToms River, NJ was built as a collection of convenient commodities and it will be discarded once it exceeds its usefulness.
Read MoreChuck and Rachel discuss an upcoming event in Iowa, plus Chuck's recent article on semi trucks and why we don't actually need to build our cities around them.
Read MoreThere are a multitude of reasons why someone might want to be in a park after dark, and most of them are completely safe and reasonable. So why are most parks technically "closed" at night?
Read MoreHauling one big load of merchandise is far more efficient than hauling multiple, smaller loads. Thus whoever can configure their operation to take advantage of this efficiency should win, right?
Read MoreTraffic stops, a city council race, and school closures were among our top stories this week.
Read MoreNew Urbanist developments are increasingly popular, yet they still betray a key tenet of the new urbanist movement: they can often only be reached by car.
Read MoreDense cities that want to live in the real world of space and time, and that do not want to become dystopias that are functional only for the rich, need to use urban space efficiently. That includes public transit.
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