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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Tragedy predictably occurs when our road designs combine high speeds and randomness.
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It is the experiences of real people that should guide our planning efforts. Their actions are the data we should be collecting, not their stated preferences.
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3 dollars and cents arguments that definitively prove the need for people-oriented, walk-friendly places.
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I don’t know why I’m an certified planner anymore. More importantly, it’s not clear to me why the world will be a better place if I am.
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How does a transit agency in a car-dominated suburban city double its bus ridership in only twelve years? Through a smart, iterative strategy of placing small bets and learning from the results.
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It is backward to think of a parking ramp as a catalyst for success; it is the outcome of success. There is no shortcut to building a Strong Town, but lots of rewards for the effort.
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In an earlier Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck Marohn chatted with urban analyst Aaron Renn, who made the case for Carmel, Indiana’s massive debt as an investment in a high-quality place for posterity. In today’s episode, Chuck pushes back more forcefully on the assumptions underlying Carmel’s big gamble.
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Retrofitting an urban, neighborhood school to resemble a suburban campus is bad public policy. Doing it in the name of safety is incoherent.
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Most cities’ zoning and development regulations obsess over things that are easy to measure, like building height and density, at the expense of the things that actually determine whether we’re building quality places.
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Forget Barbie. What does the Millennial Dream House look like?
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Derek Avery spoke at the recent North Texas Gathering about doing revitalization without gentrification. As a follow-up, we interviewed Avery about his thoughtful approach to community development.
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When it comes to parking, it’s time to reconcile our free-market rhetoric with our market-busting reality.
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When we obsess over the speed of travel—whether in our cars or on public transit—we’re missing the point of transportation. It’s not about how far you can get in a given time: it’s what you can get to.
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Hilton Hotels sacrifices their customers in the name of efficiency. There is a lesson there for your city about the tradeoffs of efficiency.
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To assume that a street-forward, mixed use development will activate a lifeless area is like assuming that gardening is a matter of “just add water.” In reality, different urban environments—like different soils, climates, and plants—require different elements of care.
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Wide, straight, monumental streets have always served the interests of those in power. They allow for the mobilization of military force, subordinate the unplanned chaos of the city to grandiose visions, and have been used to dispossess and displace small businesses, the poor, and racial and political minorities.
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A recent D Magazine story nailed the problem with Dallas’s development pattern: the city has way more infrastructure than it can afford to maintain. But its solution—assessing local taxes differently—didn’t go far enough.
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Electric bikes and scooters have enormous advantages for short urban trips. How will they change our cities? When Elisha Otis introduced the safety elevator in 1852, he never imagined skyscrapers.
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Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) are a quintessentially Strong Towns approach to urban growth and affordability issues: bottom-up, decentralized, incremental, scalable and adaptable. Unfortunately, a litany of restrictions often makes them an unappealing option even where allowed.
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