Daniel Herriges serves as Content Manager 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.

 

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RECENT ARTICLES BY Daniel:
The Catch-22 of Retrofitting the Suburbs
The Catch-22 of Retrofitting the Suburbs

Two large development projects currently working their way through the public engagement and approvals process illustrate why suburban retrofit is a really tough proposition to stake our future on.

The Activation Energy of a Walkable Place
The Activation Energy of a Walkable Place

Is it magical thinking to expect the transition from car-dependent to walkable places to happen organically? When, and how, do we need a catalyst to jump-start that process?

The Road Ahead for Cobb County
The Road Ahead for Cobb County

Cobb County, Georgia, has long been all-in on debt-fueled, unsustainable growth, and faces a tough road ahead as poverty grows and its ability to provide services declines. What are some rational responses to this predicament?

Shut Out of Housing Gains
Shut Out of Housing Gains

Homeownership is supposed to be the path to wealth and a comfortable retirement, but for millions of Americans, it never was. One central reason is that we’ve embraced a development pattern in which new places cannibalize the wealth of old places.

Toll Road or No Road?
Toll Road or No Road?

Those who benefit from an investment should pay for it. If they're unwilling to pay what it actually costs, it's a good sign that the project should never have happened in the first place.

See Your City Differently by Slowing Down
See Your City Differently by Slowing Down

One of the best ways to deeply understand the place you live is to slow down—way down—the way you get around it.

“Why Are Developers Only Building Luxury Housing?”
“Why Are Developers Only Building Luxury Housing?”

"Developers in my city are only building luxury housing. They're not building anything that ordinary people can afford." If you’ve said this lately, or heard someone else say it, here are five possible reasons why.

The Whole Elephant
The Whole Elephant

If you're talking about growth, decline or gentrification and you're not talking about the motivations of residents, newcomers, developers, and everyone else… you've already misunderstood the problem.

Cultivating Happy Accidents
Cultivating Happy Accidents

Land use planning should be a means to an end — not an end in itself.

What Housing Vouchers Can And Can't Do
What Housing Vouchers Can And Can't Do

This government housing subsidy is more cost-effective and market-based than many programs, but its impacts are limited.

Give the People What They Want
Give the People What They Want

What you think you know about public preference (for a certain style of home, neighborhood, etc.) is all wrong.

Calming the Waters: How to Address Both Gentrification AND Concentrated Poverty
Calming the Waters: How to Address Both Gentrification AND Concentrated Poverty

Overheated rhetoric and protest from all sides over neighborhood change are a reflection of the insecurity many of us feel over the future of places we love.

Rough Waters: Gentrification and Cataclysmic Money
Rough Waters: Gentrification and Cataclysmic Money

An all-or-nothing development environment creates a built-in bias toward big actors who can weather wide market swings and are in a position to exploit them for profit.

Who Benefits From Neighborhood Improvements?
Who Benefits From Neighborhood Improvements?

If urbanists want a successful, lasting renaissance of inner-city neighborhoods, they should allow the people who stuck it out through the lean years a controlling stake in their neighborhoods' rebirth.

By Any Other Name: Gentrification or Economic Exclusion?
By Any Other Name: Gentrification or Economic Exclusion?

The things that get labeled as “gentrification” refer to a set of real, meaningful, widely held concerns, and that choice of label should never be an excuse to dismiss those concerns.

Houston isn't flooded because of its land use planning.
Houston isn't flooded because of its land use planning.

These 5 harmful myths about Houston's land use planning need to be put to rest.

The Wrong Conversation
The Wrong Conversation

The ship is sinking and we're not even rearranging the deck chairs; we're arguing about their color.

Baldwin Park: A Test for New Urbanism
Baldwin Park: A Test for New Urbanism

New Urbanist design has been praised and criticized alike. A recent development in Orlando, FL offers a unique opportunity to examine the challenges and potentials for success in planned New Urbanist communities.

Why I Went to the Strong Towns Summit
Why I Went to the Strong Towns Summit

If America's dysfunctional approach to transportation is going to be solved, it's going to have to be solved in places that look like Tulsa.

Everyone Knows We Have a Traffic Problem
Everyone Knows We Have a Traffic Problem

Most cities' "traffic problems" are actually problems with the qualitative experience of traffic, not with simple travel time or delay. Perhaps we need a "Traffic Frustration Index" instead of a Traffic Congestion Index.

Small Bets in Urban Transportation
Small Bets in Urban Transportation

A big piece of the infrastructure puzzle is not about the level of government making the investment, it's about the scale of the investment. Here are 5 "small bets" to build better transportation systems in our towns.

Best of 2016: Suburban Poverty
Best of 2016: Suburban Poverty

There is arguably no place where half a century of suburban growth has more resembled a giant Ponzi scheme than in Florida.

Localizing Affordable Housing
Localizing Affordable Housing

A reliance on federal funding for housing puts local entities at the mercy of distant decision makers whose priorities may or may not be aligned with theirs. Cities and advocacy groups should be thinking about how to re-localize and claim more control over the way we tackle these problems.

The Neighbor's Dilemma
The Neighbor's Dilemma

NIMBYs are responding to a set of very rational incentives. That presents a challenge for those of us who hope to alter the course of the Suburban Experiment. 

Book Interview: Daniel Herriges and the Overton Window
Book Interview: Daniel Herriges and the Overton Window

In this special edition of the Strong Towns podcast, we bring you a short interview with Daniel Herriges, a Strong Towns contributor who wrote an essay for our new book, Thoughts on Building Strong Towns, Volume II.

A Suburban Poverty Boomtown: Lehigh Acres, Florida
A Suburban Poverty Boomtown: Lehigh Acres, Florida

This suburb is a growing place, but it's not a successful place. It risks becoming an increasingly isolating place full of people who are cut off from the economic mainstream.

Suburban Poverty: Hiding in Plain Sight
Suburban Poverty: Hiding in Plain Sight

The state of Florida went all-in on the suburban experiment in a way that few other places did. Overbuilt and half empty, many Florida suburbs will never climb out of debt and decline. 

Narrow Streets Do More With Less
Narrow Streets Do More With Less

The recipe for a successful residential street is simple, timeless, and requires very little costly engineering. 

One House at a Time on St. Paul's East Side
One House at a Time on St. Paul's East Side

One historic home at a time, St. Paul, MN is demonstrating how a critical mass of Strong Citizens can be an incredible asset to a troubled area, and how local government can play a constructive role in the incremental revitalization of such an area.

Unbundling our Housing Choices
Unbundling our Housing Choices

Our perception of Americans' housing preferences is distorted by the fact that we really have very few options available to us. Like our cable TV packages, our housing choices are "bundled," and many types of neighborhoods that might combine the things we actually love about urban and suburban environments are scarce, nonexistent, or outright illegal to build.