For a community to work,

it needs to work for people of all ages.

The mission of Strong Towns is to help make communities across North America more livable, more lovable, and more financially strong and resilient. We believe that if we make our cities and towns safe and accessible for people of all ages—including the youngest and oldest among us—then they will be safe and accessible for everyone.

The characteristics of a place that supports successful aging are, more often than not, the same characteristics that will make the place itself age successfully and remain financially strong and resilient across generations. This includes elements advocated for in AARP’s Livable Communities program:

  • Safety.

  • Walkability.

  • Age-friendly housing and transportation options.

  • Access to needed services.

  • Opportunities for residents of all ages to participate in community life.

In fact, without all of these elements, a community can never be truly “strong.”

Welcome message from Strong Towns President:

Charles Marohn

 
 

Together, AARP and Strong Towns are nurturing communities that are strong for everyone.

We created this page specifically for AARP State Directors so that you have an online space dedicated to the SWAT Program. Our goal is to show Strong Towns can be of service to your community by familiarizing you with our mission and laying out the details of our tactical assistance deliverables.

Here you will find:

  • A downloadable Collaboration Guide that provides links to nearly a dozen additional articles on how the Strong Towns approach to community building results in places we can age better and live better. Feel free to download this guide and share it with your colleagues or event hosts.

  • Detailed information on our technical assistance offerings, including presentation topics, speakers, and event implementation choices so that we can begin to build an engaging event for your community.

Click the image above to download our collaboration guide.

COLLABORATION GUIDE

In this complementary guide, “A Strong Towns Guide to Livable Communities,” we describe in more detail the intersection of AARP’s mission and our own. We articulate our model of change and suggest a few ways we can work together. We also provide excerpts and links to a dozen articles on how the Strong Towns approach to community building will result in places where we can age better and live better. We’ve organized these articles around six core beliefs about what makes communities more livable:

  • Livable Communities are Financially Strong and Resilient. A city that can pay its bills and maintain a high level of public services is a city that can help meet the unique needs of its aging residents.

  • Livable Communities are Built to a Human Scale. The Strong Towns approach is a return to building for the sense of place and immediacy that so many of humanity’s most beloved cities possess.

  • Livable Communities Foster Connection, Not Isolation. At Strong Towns, we believe that a place that is resilient and livable is one where residents casually encounter one another, where we can live among neighbors of different ages and walks of life, and where local businesses thrive and are fixtures of the community.

  • Livable Communities Have a Range of Homes for All Ages and Situations. We advocate for all cities to allow a range of housing options from accessory apartments to duplexes, “tiny houses,” and live-work arrangements that allow residents to meet their needs.

  • Livable Communities Have Safe Streets. We desperately need to refocus our infrastructure priorities toward safety and away from enabling higher vehicle speeds over longer distances. Strong Towns has been pioneering in its advocacy for safe, slow streets.

  • Livable Communities Are Navigable Without a Car. With the aging of the Baby Boom generation, the number of Americans who can no longer safely or comfortably drive a car is about to reach record highs. Yet many of us live in environments in which a car is a necessity. The Strong Towns approach would seek to change this by fostering complete neighborhoods, where more needs can be met without driving, and by removing requirements such as mandatory parking minimums that essentially require car-dependent development.

 

Are You a State Director?

If so, we’d like to send you a free copy of Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity, the new book by Strong Towns founder and president Charles Marohn.

 

TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE OFFERINGS

Strong Towns is proud to be providing technical assistance through AARP’s Livable Communities SWAT team. We can provide technical assistance by:

  • Sharing the Livable Communities message to various types of audiences including your local government, business community, and community advocates in a non-partisan manner.

  • Educating communities on the types of investments that create community, promote financial health, and improve the quality of life for people of all ages.

  • Communicating the adverse effects of the suburban development pattern and how we can begin changing it at the local level.

  • Soften the ground so that your local community can begin the discussion to bring about change to their local area.

Presentations

One of the primary ways Strong Towns can support your work creating age-friendly places is through presentations—either as webinars or in-person events. A presentation is a chance to introduce your members to the Strong Towns approach and how it can help us create more resilient and livable places. We offer a range of presentation options and formats that cover not only the basics of the Strong Towns approach and the problems with the prevailing American development pattern, but also practical examples of bottom-up action—by everyday citizens and policymakers alike—to address our communities’ pressing problems. We can work directly with the AARP State Director or through another agency with your approval. (For example: the local over 55+ resource organization or local government.)

A Strong Towns event in your area can be done through:

  • Online webinar: We have a variety of presentation options (see list below). We can also handle all of the technical requirements of scheduling and hosting a Zoom webinar for your attendees. You will also receive a video recording of this webinar.

  • In-person events: One of our speakers will travel to your area to give an in-person presentation or workshop. We have a variety of presentation options (see list below).

No matter the type of deliverable, we can help advertise your event by connecting you to media materials such as sample press releases, photos, and logos. We can also share your event with our well connected member network and far-reaching social media outlets, at your request.

+ Curbside Chat

In the Curbside Chat, we explain, in plain language, how so many American cities have found themselves in decline after decades of “growth.” The problem lies in the current model of development—one which values short-term gains over long-term prosperity. To strengthen our cities and ensure their economic success, we must look to traditional ways of building cities. In this presentation, we show how active citizens, local officials and design professionals can change the negative trajectory in their towns and help them to become more resilient—no matter what challenges lie ahead.

This core Strong Towns presentation is a game-changer for communities looking to grow more resilient in an uncertain future.

Learn more about the Curbside Chat.

+ Neighborhoods First

Risky, low returning projects too often become expensive boondoggles that haunt a community for decades. Public officials everywhere are desperately seeking an alternative. This talk will cover the "Neighborhoods First" approach to show how a community can grow stronger by making small, incremental investments over time. By observing how neighbors live their lives, by asking them where their daily struggles are, by getting out on the street and discovering what is actually going on, any local government can discern what their community’s pressing needs are. These projects are the high return investments and they are all around us.

A portfolio of incremental projects, each building on observed needs and past successes, is the basis of a solid, long term investment strategy for communities of any size. It is an approach that fits into every budget. It will empower a local government to move beyond the lack of ownership and control that comes with traditional grant programs. And most importantly, you can get started right now.

A Neighborhoods First presentation will demonstrate how to take less risk and grow financially stronger, all while directly serving the people already living and working in your city.

Learn more about this presentation.

+ Community Engagement: How to Grow from the Bottom-Up

Strong Citizens who are involved in the life of their community are what make their town stronger, one small action at a time. This is a community endeavor and not just something that local leaders manage from the top down. However, the effort to motivate and engage individual citizens can be overwhelming. In this presentation, attendees will learn the importance of citizen participation along with best practices to get the ball rolling in your community to establish and collaborate on shared goals.

+ Interactive Workshops

When it comes to any live speaking event, our main purpose is to share the Strong Towns message in order to soften the ground so that attendees can begin to talk about ways to help their town become financially strong and resilient. With our workshops, we hope to help attendees dive even deeper on these topics so that they will walk out with new insights on their community and a vision of a plan to reach their goals.

  • What you can expect: A pre-event call during which you’ll be able to share the challenges and opportunities that your conference attendees are facing. We will share our plan for how we will work with your group during the workshop in order to address the needs of your attendees and expand their understanding in the target area.
  • Workshop day: There are many interactive interventions that can be used in order to fully engage your group. These include: Design lab experiments, mass brainstorming, and other collaborative activities to clarify your community’s vision and appropriate strategies. Workshops can vary from 90 minutes to three hours depending on the size of the group.

GET TO KNOW OUR SPEAKERS

John T. Reuter

John Reuter has spent his life working and living in the West. Born into a Greek sheep ranching family, he grew up in a small logging town in Oregon, went to school at the College of Idaho, and now lives in Seattle. While in college, he co-founded the Sandpoint Reader, a weekly arts and entertainment newspaper and later freelanced for regional and national publications, including the Washington Post. He continues to write a monthly column for the Spokane Inlander. In 2007, he was appointed and then elected to be the youngest city council member in Sandpoint, Idaho’s, history and then selected by his peers to be Council President. 

Today, John works as the national Director of Local & Bipartisan Strategies for the League of Conservation Voters. He currently serves on the Board of Strong Towns. He's particularly drawn to the notion that economic development is a community endeavor not just belonging to the planners.

 

Slide Deck

Presentation to AARP New York, with John Reuter. See the full slide deck.

Audio

 

Charles Marohn

Charles Marohn—known as "Chuck" to friends and colleagues—is the Founder and President of Strong Towns and the author of Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity. He is a Professional Engineer (PE) licensed in the State of Minnesota and a land use planner with two decades of experience. He holds a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning, both from the University of Minnesota.

Marohn is also the lead author of Thoughts on Building Strong Towns—Volume I, Volume II  and Volume III—as well as the author of A World Class Transportation System. He hosts the Strong Towns Podcast and is a primary writer for Strong Towns’ web content. He has presented Strong Towns concepts in hundreds of cities and towns across North America. He is featured in the documentary film Owned: A Tale of Two Americans, and was named one of the 10 Most Influential Urbanists of all time by Planetizen.

Daniel Herriges

Daniel Herriges (Twitter: @DanielStrTowns) serves as Senior Editor for Strong Towns, and has been a regular contributor since 2015. He is also a founding member of the organization. Daniel has a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Minnesota. His obsession with maps began before he could read. His budding environmentalism can be traced back to age 4, when he yelled at his parents for stepping on weeds growing in sidewalk cracks. His love of great urban design and human-scaled, livable places has also been lifelong. Daniel has a B.A. from Stanford University in Human Biology with a concentration in Conservation and Sustainable Development. After college, he worked as an environmental activist for several years, in support of indigenous people's rights and conservation in the Amazon rainforest. He can often be found hiking or cycling. Daniel is from St. Paul, Minnesota, and now lives in Sarasota, Florida.

What are the next steps?

 

Michelle, our Events Pathfinder, will be reaching out to you through email to set up an initial phone call to learn about your needs and begin to plan how we can help.