12 Ideas That Embody How Strong Towns Advocates Think

Here are some touchstone concepts that help underlie the Strong Towns view of how to achieve a world full of places capable of growing bottom-up prosperity

Activists Fight to Keep Windsor's New Hospital in the Heart of the City

This Canadian city is set to get a new, $2 billion, state-of-the-art hospital. All well and good except for one thing: why do they want to build it in a rural area on the far outskirts of town?

Building Design Requirements Are Sometimes Bad for Cities. But Abolishing Them All is Worse.

A new Arkansas law prohibits cities from regulating the design of single-family homes in almost all instances. This is a bad idea which takes away an important tool in a city’s toolkit to nurture strong, productive places.

The Folly of Go-Big-or-Go-Home Transit

Don't be seduced by the "signature project" that takes 20 years to complete, when there's huge basket of small projects you could hit the ground running on. That's a wildly different approach than anything our transit agencies or federal transportation funding mechanisms are set up for. But it's a more promising one.

Easy Payments

The allure of a silver-bullet economic development project is like that boat you buy for a low, low down payment. You know, the one that ended up sitting in your driveway under a tarp for years. Just ask Memphis.

Sanphillippo, Big Box Stores, Top StoryJohnny SanphillippoFebruary 19, 2019#OrderlyButDumb, memphis, tax incentives, big box stores

The California High-Speed Train that Wasn’t: The Opportunity Cost of Megaprojects

California’s high-speed rail project appears indefinitely on hold. What is the opportunity cost of all the things the state hasn’t done during the decade-plus its leaders have spent fixated on this?

Best of 2018: Winning Is the Absence of Losing

The most important thing for a local government is to avoid ruin.

Marohn, Strategies, Top Story, Best of BlogCharles MarohnDecember 7, 2018antifragile, Risk, #OrderlyButDumb, Best of 2018

Let Them Apply for Variances

If granting exceptions to your city’s planning rules is so common as to have become the norm, perhaps it’s time to reconsider the rules themselves.

Gray, Planning Profession, Top StoryNolan GrayDecember 6, 2018#OrderlyButDumb, zoning

The Failure of "Just Add Water" Urbanism

To assume that a street-forward, mixed use development will activate a lifeless area is like assuming that gardening is a matter of “just add water.” In reality, different urban environments—like different soils, climates, and plants—require different elements of care.

Horbovetz, Top Story, WalkabilityArian HorbovetzOctober 9, 2018suburban retrofit, #OrderlyButDumb, mixed use, retail, page highlight

Democratizing Local Public Finance by Bringing Back Small-Scale Investors

This week on the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck talks with Jase Wilson, the founder and CEO of Neighborly, about bringing small-scale investors back to the municipal bond market, empowering people to invest in the real, observed needs of communities they care about.

Podcast, Top StoryStrong TownsOctober 8, 2018#OrderlyButDumb, innovation, municipal finance

The Inertia of Lines on Paper

Decades ago, we decided where roads will go. Whether it makes sense or not today, that is where they must go.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnOctober 8, 2018STROADS, transportation spending, #OrderlyButDumb

Moving On from Sunk Costs

The more we invest in something, the harder it becomes to walk away. Yet, we need to walk away from a lot of what we’ve built.

Marohn, Akron, Top StoryCharles MarohnOctober 1, 2018malls, #OrderlyButDumb, psychology

Downshifting into a Meaningful Life: A Conversation With Ruben Anderson

This week on the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck talks with behavior change and sustainability expert Ruben Anderson about the good life, and how we fool ourselves into thinking we can use systematic rationality to create it for ourselves.

Podcast, Top StoryStrong TownsSeptember 24, 2018sustainability, antifragile, #OrderlyButDumb, Chaotic but Smart

Rochester and the Curse of Cataclysmic Money

These campaigns are the kind of thing that large, out-of-touch bureaucracies do when they want to appear like they are doing something without actually changing anything about what they are doing.

#SlowtheCars, Marohn, Top Story, WalkabilityCharles MarohnSeptember 14, 2018pedestrian safety, #OrderlyButDumb

A Missouri City Sells Out Minority Small Businesses for Big Box Promises

University City, Missouri, is on the verge of a terrible decision: a redevelopment deal that would displace dozens of homes and minority-owned businesses in its unofficial “Chinatown” for big-box retail subsidized through tax-increment financing.

Byron, Big Box Stores, Mistakes A Town Makes, Top StoryAubrey ByronAugust 29, 2018TIF, #OrderlyButDumb, small business, St. Louis

Winning is the Absence of Losing

The most important thing for a local government is to avoid ruin.

Marohn, Top Story, StrategiesCharles MarohnAugust 20, 2018antifragile, Risk, #OrderlyButDumb, page highlight

The Mega-Project Exception That Proves the Rule?

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. But if a mega-project doesn’t have the characteristics—massive public debt, heavy infrastructure burdens, dubious if any benefit for the surrounding area—that usually make such projects so odious, is it still a bad deal?

Top Story, Economic DevelopmentSteven ShultisAugust 15, 2018Megaprojects, casino, stadium, #OrderlyButDumb

"I Don't Give a (Bleep) About Akron!"

Akron, Ohio’s subsidies for redevelopment of the failed Rolling Acres mall are a textbook case of the sunk cost fallacy: the tendency to examine new opportunities not on their own merit, but in the context of past investments.