The Hidden Lessons of Catastrophic Tree Loss

Having a city filled with one type of tree may look pretty, but what happens when pests or pestilence start killing off that particular tree species en masse?

Emma Durand-Wood, Community Stories, Top Story 2Emma Durand-WoodMay 4, 2023trees, street trees, Antifragile, antifragile, fragility, canada, Canada, Manitoba

Snow Day: Can Your City Pass the Winter Test?

The effects of winter weather on your town is one way to gauge its resilience.

Member Post, Public Space, Suburban Experiment, Top Story, OwensTiffany Owens ReedJanuary 27, 2022snow, Snow, Antifragile, Small Towns, small towns, Texas, New York, natural disasters, public transit, public space

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

Herriges, Top Evergreen, Top StoryDaniel HerrigesDecember 1, 2021strong towns approach, Jane Jacobs, Nassim Taleb, Antifragile, antifragile, complexity, Complexity, complex systems, Chaotic but Smart, #OrderlyButDumb, incrementalism, lindy, Overton Window, Jonathan Haidt

Best of 2020: Effective Quarantines and Strong Towns

Centralized systems are good at getting us cheap food, cars, and toilet paper—until they’re not. They’re also really bad at isolating deadly outbreaks.

Urban Design, Gardner, Top Story, Best of Blog, Top Story 2Spencer GardnerDecember 8, 2020Antifragile, antifragile, complexity, complex systems, coronavirus, Leon Krier, traditional development pattern, incremental development, Best of 2020

Effective Quarantines and Strong Towns

Centralized systems are good at getting us cheap food, cars, and toilet paper—until they’re not. They’re also really bad at isolating deadly outbreaks.

Urban Design, Gardner, Top StorySpencer GardnerMarch 26, 2020Antifragile, antifragile, complexity, complex systems, coronavirus, Leon Krier, traditional development pattern, incremental development

The tragic downside of efficiency

The more efficient we make our systems, the more fragile they become. To make our cities stable and prosperous, our development pattern needs to become less efficient.

Top Story, MarohnCharles MarohnMarch 17, 2020coronavirus, efficiency, fragility, Antifragile, public health, featuredcc

Coronavirus, Traffic Deaths, and Building a Strong Town

There is no better way to discredit a campaign to reduce auto fatalities than to compare the risk of death by auto crash to the risk of death by viral pandemic.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnFebruary 3, 2020safety, public health, risk, Antifragile, Nassim Taleb, coronavirus

Why Decline Is Not Normal

We have to stop looking at the stagnation and decline of our blocks and neighborhoods as a normal part of the development process.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnOctober 21, 2019Nassim Taleb, antifragile, Antifragile, TIF, Growth Ponzi Scheme, illusion of wealth, Brainerd MN, too big to fail

Do You Want to Know What Works?

Come on, Chuck, just give it up already and tell us what works. If it were only that easy.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnMay 28, 2019Leon Krier, complex systems, traditional development pattern, Antifragile, incrementalism

Aiming for Imperfection

When we aim for perfection, imperfections will disturb us. But, when we aim for imperfection, other imperfections build character.

Andrew Price, Urban Design, Top StoryAndrew PriceNovember 29, 2018Antifragile, urban planning

The Living City vs. The Mechanical City

A city is a living organism, and we should tend to it as such. A city dies when it is treated as, and functions, as a machine.

Andrew Price, Housing, Neighborhood Design, Top Story, Urban DesignAndrew PriceMay 2, 2018Antifragile, granularity, urban planning, poverty, affordable housing

Where is our republic headed?

The line between optimism and reality can be a fine one to walk.

Marohn, Growth Ponzi Scheme, #ChaoticButSmartCharles MarohnJuly 17, 2017antifragile, Antifragile, suburban experiment

Taleb Talks Parking

How does a city balance the expectations of drivers with the needs of productive places and the people who use them, when fast-paced technological change may soon upend the basic realities on which such assessments are built?