We’re signing off for 2018. Thank you for the amazing year.
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In our final week of new content in 2018, we looked back on some of the best articles of the year, and published new stories about how Strong Towns principles show us better ways to address deadly roads, broken planning processes, affordable housing shortages, and more.
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Tulsa, OK is the latest city to offer remote workers some tempting incentives if they’ll move there for only a year. Is this a smarter approach to economic development, or do our cities need to #dothemath?
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Why all these new storefronts are sitting vacant.
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Local governments can’t take on more and more promises without generating enough wealth to meet those obligations—not without a reckoning. We need a radical revolution in how we plan, manage, and inhabit our cities, counties, and neighborhoods. We need a Strong Towns approach.
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For a struggling city, negative perceptions from with the community can send it into a spiral of decline. It takes a major shift in perspective to get the city back on track.
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Here’s Chuck Marohn’s annual list of his favorite books he read in 2018.
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Incremental approaches are often cheaper, faster, or have less risk than sudden approaches. Let’s explore different types of incrementalism.
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The closing of the mall’s anchor store exposes how fragile the community’s business model is, providing an opening to shift approach.
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Minneapolis just became the first major U.S. city to embrace a key Strong Towns principle: every neighborhood should be allowed to evolve to the next increment of development.
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What does it take to be a small-scale developer in a struggling part of town? To put your money where your mouth is and participate in incremental neighborhood revitalization? One of our staffers knows firsthand.
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Automated vehicle technology will do nothing to make our streets better places to be.
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Two simple questions can help us understand why different groups don’t seem to speak the same language about growth and development in cities, and why seemingly-strange political alliances form around these issues.
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This week on the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck discusses the role of planning in correcting for legacies of segregation and inequality. Is more enlightened policy enough to change course? Or do we need to more fundamentally rethink who has the power to shape cities?
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"Developers in my city are only building luxury housing. They're not building anything that ordinary people can afford." If you’ve said this lately, or heard someone else say it, here are five possible reasons why.
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Tragedy predictably occurs when our road designs combine high speeds and randomness.
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In the past two weeks, we’ve re-run some of our best content of 2018, and explored new topics including how to know when your town is ready for a parking garage; how to double your city’s bus ridership through a smart, iterative strategy; a novel intersection design for people on foot; why cities work better when we tolerate imperfection; the value (or lack thereof) of a planning certification; and more!
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As a cycling advocate, I avoid talking about the times when riding a bike in the city is scary, because I don’t want to deter would-be new riders from giving it a try. There’s only one problem with pretending I’m never afraid: it isn’t true.
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Kea Wilson shares her five favorite Strong Towns-adjacent reads (and one favorite watch) of the year. From the short works of Jane Jacobs to a nonfiction epic about Americans who live out of their cars, and more!
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The most important thing for a local government is to avoid ruin.
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