A troubled project in Mission, KS, speaks to the problems with large, single-developer projects—but also why fixating on the "bad developer" narrative isn't necessarily helpful.
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Many people who want to change things for the better in their place want an example of another town or city that’s already got it all figured out—somewhere they can copy. Here’s why that won’t necessarily work.
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If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a whole community to build a building. The small-scale developers of South Bend, IN, are showing how to do just that—and do it successfully in the long term.
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The way we build our neighborhoods in North America is nothing like making a pizza. But maybe it should be.
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Over the course of a Sunday afternoon, this Strong Towns member created a simple and achievable plan to transform a local street—all on a small budget!
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Parking reform can be a hard sell when it’s done all at once. Here are some small steps you can take instead to start helping your community use less land on parking.
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A recent CNBC documentary features Strong Towns insights from Charles Marohn about why suburban development is so risky.
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The American Enterprise Institute has released some impressive—and free—data tools for understanding housing markets and development potential. And as a bonus, attend their upcoming talks if you’re in California!
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If you value the end state of a walkable, diverse, dynamic place with a lot of local character, then you must also value the process that gets you there.
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Galesburg, IL, is talking about Strong Towns ideas, centered around a question that many Strong Towns readers are familiar with: “Is our downtown built for cars instead of people?”
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Design affects us in a multitude of ways, and when we look to nature as inspiration for designing the built environment, the core takeaways are: adaptation and incrementalism.
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Leadership in Indianapolis has taken strides toward lifting parking minimums, and making their city less car dependent and more transit friendly—all while keeping their fiscal house in order.
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Last week, the city council of Spokane, WA, voted on a truly “bold, transformational package” that will allow for more forms of missing-middle housing and infill development in the city.
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Strong Towns founding member Seth Zeren stopped by the Mass Construction podcast recently for a conversation on incremental development, New Urbanism, and the Strong Towns movement.
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Small-scale, incremental development works in the suburbs too, if we let it.
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The problems with "community input" are many and obvious. One misguided response is to favor more top-down policy making, simply overriding the objections of local "NIMBYs." But there is a third way.
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The environmental groups suing Minneapolis to block implementation of its groundbreaking 2040 Plan have a limited understanding of environmentalism, but a keen grasp of how to slow down policy reform.
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These pop-up shops in Berwyn, IL, are a great example of how communities can provide low-cost, low-risk spaces for local business owners to get their foot in the door.
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For too long, our housing policy has put investor returns and macroeconomic goals over the universal human need for shelter. The Strong Towns approach to incremental housing is a badly needed corrective.
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Incrementalism is not an end in itself. Nor is it about a “small-is-beautiful” aesthetic for its own sake. Instead, it’s a practical pathway toward resilient, financially sound places.
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