Cities are complex ecosystems. For areas in need of redevelopment, the only way to return to a healthy urban fabric is incrementally, a few small projects a year until the neighborhood has buildings of every age and condition, suitable for adaptation to the particular needs of some future time.
Read MoreJane Jacobs repeatedly challenges us to embrace the complex -- the ballet -- and not just that which is simple and easy to code.
Read MorePedestrian safety programs acknowledge a problem, but fail to truly solve it.
Read MoreA strong town needs strong local businesses.
Read MoreA Victory Garden doesn’t just grow healthy food. It builds a regenerative foundation for creating surplus through the active responsibility of its citizens' output. A Victory Garden tests and adjusts the resiliency measures on which public policy sits.
Read MoreThe corner store has a mythic place in our view of American cities. Mythic because, in most cities, they exist only in our minds.
Read MoreExploring fine-grained and coarse-grained development in San Juan, Boston and Hoboken.
Read MoreChurches ought to be at the forefront of stewarding local neighborhood spaces and places surrounding their four walls for human flourishing.
Read MoreThere’s a weird war raging these days between people who advocate high rise living in the urban core and folks who can’t stand to live in anything but a fully detached home on a quarter acre lot. I always choose the thing in the middle. I’m a Main Street kind of guy.
Read MoreThirty-seven years ago, some idiot decided to build a Kmart and accompanying monstrous parking lot right in the middle of a major street in the heart of the city, deadening any life on the street. Now it's finally going away.
Read MoreUrban environments full of fine-grained detail, hidden nooks and crannies and narrow passages are memorable, lovable places that stimulate our sense of play and adventure. They are a way to use land more intensively and productively without building monolithic, outsized developments. A historic artists' colony nestled in a residential neighborhood in Florida provides an example.
Read MoreWhen we talk about parks in cities, it helps if we can classify them into two types. Grand Parks are destinations. Neighborhood Parks are the living room of the community.
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Engagement photos are either urban or rural. They are either a former factory or a leafy meadow, the brick wall of a forgotten factory or an empty beach. Never the subdivision. Never the cul-de-sac.
Read MoreYou can break any law you want if you wear an orange vest.
Read MoreI love the call and response of the city. We speak to each other through all these subtle gestures - putting out a dog-bowl on a hot day, painting the front door, installing a free library box. It's a relay passed on from one person to another. We each have our own way of expressing kindness or humour to the people around us, and the city becomes a canvas of all these tiny acts of humanity.
Read MoreLet's say you're building an apartment building with over 20 units (arbitrary number). If it's not obvious that your parking should be opt-in and underground, maybe the development isn't a great idea to begin with?
At Strong Towns, we seem to like quick tools that help with the mental math of cities. For example, I loved the Strong Towns Strength Test which asked, "Take a photo of your main street at midday. Does the picture show more people than cars?" Maybe this parking lot thing is another weather-vane with built in wisdom. It's not to be relied upon, but can give you a good hunch to start from.
Read MoreDrunk driving is a behavior on which we spend a lot of effort discouraging and yet somehow largely ignore the importance of design. This article asks whether America has a drinking problem or a driving problem? What's worse yet, is that through things like minimum parking requirements and zoning we are virtually coding a problem into existence.
Read MoreSeth Zeren provides this week's version of the Monday Member News Digest, a look at the blog posts written this past week by Strong Towns members.
Read MoreFor municipalities that want to become Strong Towns, here’s a ranked list of the highest impact actions that would help restore a productive development pattern. This is a generic list, not tailored to any specific community, but the actions on this list would apply to the majority of US towns.
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