Where Do I Start?

A mayor in Massachusetts once asked me a question that I thought I had already answered.

We had spent the entire day together, as she had invited me to her city as part of my book tour for Escaping the Housing Trap. Along with senior staff, we walked neighborhoods, examined development sites, discussed regulations, talked through political realities, and identified practical opportunities to make housing easier to build.

We weren't talking in abstractions. We were talking about specific places and specific actions.

By the end of the day, I felt like we had covered a tremendous amount of ground. Then, just before she introduced me for a public lecture that evening, she turned to me and asked: "Where do I start?"

I remember feeling momentarily confused. Start? I thought we had spent the entire day talking about where to start. It wasn't until later that I understood what she was asking.

We had, in fact, identified a lot of places to start. There were specific sites where housing could be built. Regulations that could be changed. Conversations that needed to happen. Staff processes that could be improved. Small projects that could move forward immediately and larger ones that would take time.

The problem wasn't a lack of options.

The problem was that there were so many of them.

I've thought about that conversation often because it revealed something I had not fully appreciated at the time. The more seriously you take the Strong Towns approach, the harder governing becomes.

That probably sounds backwards. Many people encounter Strong Towns and experience a sense of clarity. The world suddenly makes more sense. They begin to understand why housing is expensive, why streets are dangerous, why local governments struggle financially, why so many well-intentioned projects fail to deliver on their promises.

The fog lifts, but then something else happens. Once you stop looking for a single solution, you start seeing how many things matter. Housing isn't just a zoning problem. Transportation isn't just an engineering problem. Financial resilience isn't just a budgeting problem.

Everything is connected to everything else. And unlike the people selling simple answers, you can no longer pretend otherwise.

That mayor understood this. She wasn't overwhelmed because she lacked competence. She was overwhelmed because she possessed it.

She had enough understanding to appreciate the scale of the challenge. Enough humility to know that there wasn't one lever to pull, one reform to adopt, or one speech to give that would set everything right.

In some ways, false certainty is easier.

If the answer is simply to build more housing, then you build more housing. If the answer is simply to widen the road, then you widen the road. If the answer is simply to attract more growth, then you chase growth. The complexity disappears. So does much of reality.

The Strong Towns approach asks local leaders to live in reality. To acknowledge complexity without becoming paralyzed by it. To make decisions despite incomplete information. To take the next prudent step without knowing exactly where the path will lead.

That is difficult work. And it is often lonely work.

What that mayor was really asking me was not where to start. She already knew how to start. She was asking how to carry the weight of everything that came after.

Carrying the Weight 

That question shapes how I think about the work of Strong Towns. For years, I assumed that if people could see their city differently, they would naturally know what to do next. Then I assumed that if they found others who shared that perspective, they would have the support they needed to move forward.

Both things are important. Neither is sufficient.

Eventually I came to understand that many of the most important people in this movement did not need another article, another presentation, or another explanation. They needed a sounding board. They needed peers. They needed a place to wrestle with difficult decisions among people who understood the challenge.

In short, they needed help carrying the weight. That realization sits behind much of our newest work.

The City Partnership Program is built around the idea that local governments often benefit from having a trusted partner. Not someone who arrives with a pre-packaged solution or a consultant's report, but someone who can help leaders sort through competing priorities, identify opportunities, and build momentum around practical next steps.

The Strong Towns Accelerator emerged from a similar need. Again and again, we met people inside city hall who understood the Strong Towns approach and wanted to move in that direction. They did not lack conviction. They lacked support. They needed a place to work through real-world obstacles with other people facing similar challenges.

The same is true of our Cohort Program and the Civic Leaders Summit. Local leadership can be isolating. The challenges are highly specific, often political, and rarely solved by a simple answer. There is tremendous value in being able to sit across the table from someone who has faced a similar situation and ask: What did you do? What worked? What would you do differently?

Even our events increasingly serve this purpose.

People often assume our events are about bringing experts to town to teach. There is some truth to that. But the most meaningful conversations often happen afterward, when local leaders walk a neighborhood together, stand on a street corner discussing a difficult intersection, or gather around a table talking through the practical realities of implementation.

Those moments are rarely dramatic. Nobody leaves with a master plan. What they leave with is often more valuable: a clearer understanding of the next step.

And in my experience, that is how most meaningful change actually happens. Not through a grand breakthrough. Through a series of thoughtful people taking the next prudent step, learning from the result, and then taking another.

Strengthening Local Leadership

One thing worth noting is that Strong Towns is not a consulting organization. That is intentional. We have been asked many times over the years to become one, or to perform that role, but that is not what we are called to do. In fact, much of what we believe about change argues against it.

The traditional consulting model assumes that expertise can be brought in from outside. Someone studies the situation, diagnoses the problem, recommends a solution, and then moves on to the next community. There is certainly a role for that kind of work. Many cities benefit from specialized expertise.

But strong towns are not built by outside experts. They are built by local leaders making countless small decisions over many years. They are built by people who understand the history of a place, the personalities involved, the political realities, the financial constraints, and the opportunities that outsiders often miss.

The mayor in Massachusetts did not need me to tell her what to do. She already knew more about her city than I ever could. What she needed — and what many local leaders need — is not someone to take over the decision-making process. It is someone to help them sort through the complexity. Someone to ask good questions. Someone to help them identify the next prudent step. That may sound like a subtle distinction, but I think it is an important one.

The goal is not to replace local leadership. The goal is to strengthen it.

That is why our City Partnership Program, Accelerator, Cohorts, Civic Leaders Summit, and many of our events are designed the way they are. We are not trying to hand communities a blueprint. We are not trying to become the permanent answer to anyone's problems. We are not trying to relieve local leaders of the responsibility to lead.

We are trying to help them lead better.

Often that means helping them see possibilities they had overlooked. Sometimes it means connecting them with peers facing similar challenges. Sometimes it means providing a framework, a tool, or a sounding board. And sometimes it simply means helping someone realize that they already know enough to take the next step.

That is not glamorous work. It rarely produces headlines. But if cities are complex systems, and if local leadership matters, it may be some of the most important work we do.

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on this, so join me and our members in the Strong Towns Commons, where we'll continue this conversation.

[[divider]]

More Information

• Become a Member
• City Partnership Program
• Accelerator
• Civic Leaders Summit
• Strong Towns Cohorts
• Strong Towns Events