Welcome to the Strongest Town Contest!
Strong Towns is excited to welcome to you our sixth annual Strongest Town Contest. We organize this competition each year to celebrate the towns and cities using a Strong Towns approach to build financial resilience and longterm prosperity. What is a Strong Towns approach? You can read about it in more detail here, but it can be summarized this way:
A Strong Towns approach
Relies on small, incremental investments (little bets) instead of large, transformative projects
Emphasizes resiliency of result over efficiency of execution
Is designed to adapt to feedback
Is inspired by bottom/up action (chaotic but smart) and not top/down systems (orderly but dumb).
Seeks to conduct as much of life as possible at a personal scale
Is obsessive about accounting for its revenues, expenses, assets and long term liabilities
We received dozens of nominations for this year’s contest, from cities all across North America. Strong Towns staff chose sixteen finalists—there were so many great nominees, it wasn’t easy—and now the contest in your hands. Below you will find the eight first round matchups, as well as the overall contest bracket. Nominees answered eight questions on a range of topics, from economic resilience and housing and transportation, to how communities have responded to the challenges of the pandemic.
Voting for Round 1 ends on Thursday, March 18 at 12 p.m. CDT. Round 1 winners will be announced on Friday, March 19. For the schedule and contest rules, and to follow along with the competition every step of the way, bookmark the Strongest Town page.
