Finance Decoder
Input a handful of your city's publicly-available financial numbers and automatically produce 7 indicator charts to visualize the financial trajectory of your place.
The fiscal health of our cities isn’t shaped by a single budget or council vote—it’s the result of decades of decisions, policies, and development patterns. Across the country, Strong Towns advocates are using the Finance Decoder to better understand their communities’ fiscal trajectories.
Explore their work, share your own, and help build a growing map of local insight.
You probably wouldn’t be able to tell these two buildings apart, yet their economic performance couldn’t be more different. A deep dive by geospatial firm Urban3 shows why that’s the case.
What the Finance Decoder revealed about Fayetteville, Springdale, and Siloam Springs—through the eyes of a local Strong Towns member.
What do you get when you combine too much funding, a broken development model, and no clear priorities? A six-roundabout interchange built to serve big-box stores that are already closing.
What do a taqueria, a bike shop, and an art center have in common? They’re all outpacing a retail giant when it comes to property tax revenues.
Finance in a Strong Town