Come Join Our "Strong Towns" Book Club

The goal of the Strong Towns movement is to change the conversation—and ultimately the culture—around how we build our towns and cities in North America. We believe the last seventy-plus years have been ruinous in that respect, as communities throughout the United States and Canada pursue an approach to development that leaves our places less safe, less humane, less beautiful, less lovable, and financially brittle.

As an organization, two ways we tried to change the culture last year was through the book Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity (published October 1) and the subsequent 55-city Strong America Tour.

We are keeping that momentum going into 2020 by launching a book club for the Strong Towns book.

You are invited to go deep with us over the next several months. This is a chance for everyone—Strong Towns staff very much included—to learn from each other, think critically about the concepts in the book, and apply them to our own places.

For each chapter we are providing questions to spur discussion, suggested activities, supplemental material, and a monthly ask-the-author webinar with Strong Towns founder and president Charles Marohn. As mentioned above, Strong Towns staffers will be active in the book club too.

We’re hosting the book club in our free Strong Towns community site. There you can already find materials for Chapters One and Two.

We know some of you are hosting local book clubs as well. (This is a great way to either inaugurate or strengthen a Local Conversation, ninety of which already active around the United States and Canada.) To help your efforts, we will also be providing a downloadable discussion guide for each chapter.

Add your voice to the book club. Let’s remember 2020 as the year the cultural tide unmistakably changed around how we build strong and resilient towns and cities.