Charles Marohn
Charles Marohn (known as “Chuck” to friends and colleagues) is the founder and president of Strong Towns and the bestselling author of “Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis.” With decades of experience as a land use planner and civil engineer, Marohn is on a mission to help cities and towns become stronger and more prosperous. He spreads the Strong Towns message through in-person presentations, the Strong Towns Podcast, and his books and articles. In recognition of his efforts and impact, Planetizen named him one of the 15 Most Influential Urbanists of all time in 2017 and 2023.
Programs that rely on federal subsidies eventually collapse—or hollow out in slow motion. That doesn’t mean we should fight harder to protect those subsidies. It means we should build towns that don’t need them.
The problem isn’t that we haven’t sprawled enough. It’s that sprawl creates fragile places instead of resilient ones.
The Trump administration’s elimination of congestion pricing was shortsighted, but NYC’s congestion pricing was deeply flawed from the start. If congestion pricing is ever going to work as intended, it needs to be revamped with the right priorities.
The Federal Highway Administration has a chart full of answers to that question you might find useful.
We're building something we know won't be here two decades from now.
Incremental doesn’t mean slow. When every neighborhood can build a little, the whole country can build a lot.
This year, official inflation is up 2.6% while the Christmas Cookie Inflation Index rose by 6.2%. What does that mean?
"When we fail to take action, we do a massive injustice to the public that we are supposed to be serving."
The Federal Reserve just cut interest rates. Some people are celebrating the move as making housing more attainable, but it's really just reinforcing the housing trap. Need proof? Look no further than the 40-year mortgage.
The U.S. is in a massive housing bubble fueled by widespread fraud. With banks incentivized to look away and Wall Street and Washington incentivized to keep housing prices artificially high, a bottom-up approach is the only hope for bringing sanity back to the housing market.
Brainerd, Minnesota’s newest addition isn't exactly cause for celebration.
Are urban areas really more financially sustainable than suburbs? Do urban areas inherently have higher infrastructure costs? Here's what Strong Towns actually says about the Suburban Experiment and infrastructure spending.