We don’t form our opinions about beauty, the value of a dollar, or the value of a house or neighborhood, in a vacuum—we come up with those beliefs based on a long chain of assumptions about what we think other people think.
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In an earlier Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck Marohn chatted with urban analyst Aaron Renn, who made the case for Carmel, Indiana’s massive debt as an investment in a high-quality place for posterity. In today’s episode, Chuck pushes back more forcefully on the assumptions underlying Carmel’s big gamble.
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In New Hampshire, the state charges local planning boards with looking at whether the zoning they have created is going to make a town prosperous. This implies a clear obligation to do the math on costs and benefits of new development.
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Retrofitting an urban, neighborhood school to resemble a suburban campus is bad public policy. Doing it in the name of safety is incoherent.
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This week, we looked at how local development regulations get the details wrong, how the American Dream of homeownership is evolving, another way to measure a community’s underinvestment in maintenance, the challenges of transportation in rural America, and more.
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We know how to make our streets so safe that no cyclist really needs a helmet. Should we all wear them anyway?
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Strong Towns principles aren’t just good for your community’s bottom line. They’re good for its health and well-being too. Here’s a one-stop guide to some of our best content explaining why.
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As American families abandon traditional trick-or-treating for “safer” alternatives like Trunk-or-Treat, a rare opportunity for neighborhood community engagement is lost.
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Being carless in rural communities, whether because of finance or circumstance, can be a debilitating and isolating situation. How can we meet rural America’s transportation needs in meaningful yet affordable ways?
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In this episode of our podcast It’s the Little Things, Jacob chats with Strong Towns’s own Aubrey Byron about how to start your own bike advocacy group and have an impact on bike policy in your place.
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San Jose, California has embraced active transportation and pledged to eliminate vehicular deaths. So why is the city intent on widening a neighborhood street and building a four-lane overpass next to an elementary school?
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Most cities’ zoning and development regulations obsess over things that are easy to measure, like building height and density, at the expense of the things that actually determine whether we’re building quality places.
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Take a photo tour of some great streets in Syracuse and see what makes the traditional development pattern work so well on the ground.
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Bounce Innovation Hub, a tech incubator in Akron, OH, has not only given new life to the former B.F. Goodrich tire company headquarters. Its CEO hopes that it will be the start of a new wave of manufacturing in Akron.
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There are many ways for state and local governments to run hidden deficits, one of which is deferred maintenance. But it turns out there is a way to measure the extent to which local governments kick the maintenance can down the road.
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A few reflections during the middle of a marathon of travel.
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This was an unusually interview-heavy week for Strong Towns. Our top content of the week includes conversations with community developer Derek Avery, cycling advocate Chris Bruntlett, and urban researcher Aaron Renn, as well as a sneak preview of walkability guru Jeff Speck’s new book Walkable City Rules.
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Forget Barbie. What does the Millennial Dream House look like?
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A proposed gas tax hike in Missouri would just mean more money to perpetuate a broken system. It would continue the damage the state’s transportation policies have done to communities big and small.
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Local advocates who are at each others’ throats often have legitimate, but conflicting, aims. Talking about the trade-offs involved isn’t going to make us all start agreeing with each other. But it might make our disagreements more productive.
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