While Others Talk, This Movement Builds
Members of Stop TxDOT speaking about their advocacy at the 2024 Strong Towns National Gathering. Photo by Asia Mieleszko.
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The systems we’ve built are cracking. Over 40,000 deaths on city streets are decried as unavoidable. Municipal budgets are strained, and the bills are coming due. More and more families feel completely closed out of not only homeownership, but a place to call home at all.
The pledges to fix all of this over the last decade are coming up short—if they’re coming up at all. I’ve written about children being told the most dangerous part of their school day is pick-up and drop-off. About how federal programs meant to redress the harms of past engineering choices are instead entrenching them, displacing families along the way. About how larger-than-life projects are setting the stage for financial dependence, not resilience.
It’s overwhelming. And I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t feel impossible to fix. I wouldn’t blame you if you felt the same.
But even as cities edge towards bankruptcy, crossing the street remains one of the riskiest activities we do on a daily basis, and property values climb far out of step with wages, Strong Towns has built a movement that’s ready for this moment.
This movement is powered by people like Army Master Sergeant and Strong Towns Fayetteville founder Ben Hultquist.
Following another local fatality, Hultquist went on local news to hold the Reilly Road’s design accountable in the tragedy. The corridor slices through neighborhoods at highway speeds, despite being surrounded by homes and businesses. This is how he described the conditions: “There are no bike lanes, let alone protected bike lanes, and sidewalks are sporadic. Traffic lights are spread out with very few having crosswalks, and almost all work off of sensors that are designed for 3,000+ lb vehicles, not my 50 lb bicycle.”
He and Strong Towns Fayetteville are pushing for a new approach, arguing that dangerous conditions won’t wait for expensive, long-term projects. Their message: safer streets can—and must—start sooner. With the pedestrian fatality rate tripling in Fayetteville in the last year alone, a new approach is more urgent than ever.
This movement is powered by people like Lorelei Bailey, who founded Strong Towns Artesia after moving from Florida to Southern California. In the small city of Artesia, she saw “good bones” and untapped potential. It was enough to make her want to stay and get involved. Lorelei launched Strong Towns Artesia with a simple but powerful belief: starting the conversation is the first step toward real change. “It’s not important to me that I’m noticed or recognized so long as the work gets done—because the work is so important,” she explained. Her vision is a community strong enough that Strong Towns Artesia eventually won’t be needed at all.
This movement is powered by people like Dordt University professor Jonathan Gingrich, who is shaping the next generation of engineers to think beyond checked boxes and code compliance.
Last year, when he led an engineering course for the first time, Gingrich used the standard materials, the ones necessary for the fundamentals of engineering (or FE) exam. He had his reservations. “This just doesn’t feel right,” he recalled thinking. “You’re taught to take for granted what shows up in the codes.” It didn’t square with his own values. Neither did it align with what his university was preaching.
That’s why this year, in addition to the standard materials, he assigned Chuck Marohn’s “Confessions of a Recovering Engineer.”
“[Early in the book, Marohn] talks about the values behind the codes. Here at Dordt, we’re a Christian institution, and so we have a lot of faith-based connections with the idea of values,” Gingrich noted. “We are actually encouraged to bring in perspectives that more philosophically teach you how to think about the profession of engineering, rather than just the practice of engineering. What are the values that we would consider important?”
As he trains the next generation of engineers, Gingrich is hoping that his students will continue interrogating the truths of their profession. That, when they go and improve upon the work of their predecessors, they’ll consider what values underpinned those past decisions and what values are going to inform their own. To that end, he’s not just guiding his students through Marohn’s book, he’s also integrating a new model for analyzing crashes into the curriculum.
And this movement is generating wins.
In Albuquerque, Strong Towns members and their Local Conversation helped bring new bike lanes downtown. In Sacramento, Strong SacTown’s advocacy led to a $4.6 million “quick-build” infrastructure program focused on urgent street safety improvements. “Quick-builds can and should be our No. 1 priority to address the fatality crisis,” said Alyssa Lee of Strong SacTown. Thanks to their persistence, Sacramento now has a dedicated Vision Zero Transportation Safety Team making fast, targeted changes using existing funds. In Ottawa, Strong Towns members are routinely given a seat at the table when it comes to improving the safety of the city’s streets.
In addition to these wins, Strong Towns ideas are staking out their place in mainstream discourse. In The New York Times piece “In Car-Centric Arizona, a Suburb Bets Big on Bicycles,” our Chief Technical Advisor Edward Erfurt is quoted as a go-to expert on land use and development. At the same time, a major report from the University of Texas at Austin’s Civitas Institute, How to Address the Nation’s Housing Supply and Affordability Challenges, draws directly from Strong Towns’ core message. Citing Chuck Marohn, the report stresses that we don’t need sweeping national programs to solve the housing crisis. Instead, cities can unlock more housing by removing unnecessary barriers and empowering local builders.
In 2024, The Wall Street Journal sounded the alarm on stroads. The Washington Post urged readers to “rethink parking lots.” The New York Times warned that cities are “awash in asphalt.” Highway expansions are routinely bad-mouthed in major publications nowadays and interest in incremental development is enjoying a renaissance. Strong Towns resources like the Beyond Blame Report and Housing-Ready City Toolkit are circulating municipal offices. The just-released Finance Decoder is already sparking a wave of financial self-awareness that will forever reshape how city leaders and their constituents think about public accounting.
When everything feels too big to fix, Strong Towns reminds us where to focus and, frankly, where real change starts: right where we are. Amidst all the noise and uncertainty, this movement is cutting through. Now, all it needs is you.
Strong Towns is helping local leaders, technical professionals and involved residents across North America make their communities more prosperous and financially resilient.
This movement needs you. Become a member today.