A cautionary tale on rain gardens.
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The winds are shifting for cities. Are you paying attention?
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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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In the realm of urban planning, there’s plenty of discourse out there about housing affordability—but what about household wealth building?
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The modern conceit is that we are far more advanced than the people of past generations—but how do our cities really stack up against those of the past?
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We all know about the Suburban Experiment here at Strong Towns—but are we now also starting to see the rise of a new paradigm?
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Large swaths of our cities were built to reflect a post-World War Two boom that was an economic anomaly. But that party is long over…and, in many ways, wasn’t that great to begin with. So why do we keep romanticizing the past rather than thinking about the cities we need now?
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Our preference for the incremental, iterative, and bottom-up is well-known. But does that mean there is no room for big dreams and master plans?
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Large swaths of our cities were built to reflect a post-World War Two boom that was an economic anomaly. But that party is long over…and, in many ways, wasn’t that great to begin with. So why do we keep romanticizing the past rather than thinking about the cities we need now?
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Giving valuable space in cities over to cars isn’t great for building walkable or productive places. But for now at least, our urban neighborhoods need some parking. This an area where thoughtful design can help us solve multiple problems at once.
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It’s time for mandatory parking minimums to go. That doesn’t mean, though, that the need for parking is going to magically disappear. We would also be wise to plan for smart, adaptable parking solutions, so our cities can incrementally urbanize.
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It matters what size chunks we build our cities in. Making room for many small-scale development projects on small lots is the universal historical model for a reason, and modern cities could stand to get back to it.
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Is a desire for local character your jam? If so, fight for missing-middle commercial space in your neighborhood. Fight for the corner bar and the corner store. We need an approach that is much more flexible, more true to what humans want from cities, and messier.
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Less than 20% of the country lives in regions with high-quality transit systems that serve most of the population. There is a stark divide between the six or eight large metros that are the most urban in the United States, and everywhere else.
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In order to get back to building the kinds of places we love the most, we have to embrace the messy, unpredictable and always-changing nature of life.
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It’s very easy to get caught up in beautiful renderings but the truth is, most of suburbia is beyond repair. We must make strategic investments in the places that have the best chance for success.
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These places all have many of the physical elements needed for success, quite frankly, because they were built for it originally. What they need most is people; people that care about the place and have the energy to make it better.
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If you're involved with urban planning in any fashion, and you don’t know about Savannah, Georgia, well, you’ve got a big hole in your education.
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There’s simply no upside to making un-walkable places into C- versions of walkable cities. Making marginal improvements to driveable suburbia really isn’t worth the effort
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