What lessons can we glean from a century-old solution to housing crises?
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For a city to be “antifragile,” to bounce back from disaster and disruption stronger than it was before, it needs to embrace the lessons of healthy ecological systems.
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What are the origins of our current water systems, and how should we think about them, going forward?
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This film makes a human rights case for safer streets, while showing the historic roots of safe streets advocacy in the U.S. and the power of tactical urbanism.
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The idea of a permanent community “character” was an invention of the suburban era, and it's showing its cracks now—because it was never an attainable or desirable goal.
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This interactive map allows you to view just how much space is being wasted in your city (and in the rest of the U.S.) on parking lots.
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What if we could get back large buildings hosting businesses at a hyperlocal scale—and what if that actually helped reduce the sentiment we call NIMBYism?
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Our excessive expansion of the interstate highway system has destroyed urban downtowns—and it’s wiped out many small towns altogether.
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In Monopoly, there are only two types of real estate: houses and hotels. But were hotels understood differently in 1904, when the game was first created?
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Planning must become a job that planners can actually do in a 40-hour work week. This will require a different approach to planning, altogether.
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We need people who will build in the places where big, corporate developers won’t. But how do we get enough small-scale developers back to make a difference?
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One family’s history tells volumes about the development of Kansas City since the 1950s.
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There is a human scale that has been forgotten here in America. Here’s how we might be able to reintegrate it into our cities.
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Let’s look at how alleys fell out of favor in the American development pattern, and how this relates to zoning codes and ADUs.
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Looking at the history of the alley reveals not only why they were once so useful, but why they are underutilized in many cities today.
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Overlooked and neglected for too long, it’s time to rediscover the strength-building potential of the American alley.
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After World War II, the federal government subsidized a massive suburban experiment that was completely unprecedented in human history. But—as a mostly-forgotten 1942 manual by the Department of Commerce makes clear—it didn’t have to be that way.
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We use the phrase “traditional development pattern” in dozens of Strong Towns essays. Here’s your one-stop-shop explainer article as to what that means.
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Gig Harbor, Washington has gone from fishing town to suburban bedroom community. With its founding industry largely gone, can the city remain a place that fosters community and welcomes newcomers to join in it?
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Our collective willingness to maintain infrastructure that has outlived its economic rationale will evaporate in due course. Only the truly productive bits will survive the fullness of time.
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