Equipped with “grit and grind”—but also with a whole lot of good data on the financial consequences of past development decisions—Memphis, Tennessee is taking smart steps toward a bottom-up renaissance. Just ask its Chief Operating Officer, Doug McGowen.
Read MoreWhile new transportation funding is needed, more money without significant reform is worse than no funding at all. We need to continue to oppose all of these funding efforts until serious reform is on the table.
Read MoreA recent New York Times op ed despaired that economic trends have passed rural America by. So isn’t it time for some new economic trends?
Read MoreYour Strong Towns Knowledge Base question of the week, answered here.
Read MoreJohn Reuter—board member at Strong Towns and former councilperson at the City of Sandpoint, Idaho—shares his insights in how you can propose eliminating parking minimums in your town—including how to tell a compelling story, how to find data that enhances that story, and how to build community support around removing parking minimums.
Read MoreThat high-end apartment building over there has nothing to do with the low-income families who need affordable housing over here, right? In fact, we’re all more connected than we tend to think—and a new study demonstrates this in a surprising way.
Read MoreStreet trees can be a huge maintenance headache, but are they worth it anyway for a fiscally prudent city? What do we think of land banks? Why isn’t “efficiency” always a good thing for cities? What the heck does “vibrant” mean? And more of your questions answered in the video and audio from April 2019’s Ask Strong Towns webcast!
Read MoreThe Strong Towns Podcast is back with brand new episodes. And to kick things off, we’re offering you a sneak peek into the upcoming full-length book by Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn—including details of the contents that haven’t yet been shared anywhere else. And you can pre-order your copy today!
Read MoreOur next Ask Strong Towns: Celebrity Edition webcast features special guest Derek Avery, a pioneering small-scale developer and champion of revitalization without gentrification. Sign up to ask him your questions in this members-only live Q&A on May 10th!
Read MoreWe should require our local governments to develop some discipline and reliability in their permitting approach. These are practices that demonstrate respect for both our civic institutions and the people they are supposed to serve.
Read MoreA robust urban farming landscape can make your city stronger. But can it really, y’know…feed your citizens?
Read MoreYour Strong Towns Knowledge Base question of the week, answered here.
Read MoreHuman behavior can be influenced in subtle—and often very pro-social—ways through design of place.
Read MoreA deep, dredged ship canal is a recipe for catastrophic flooding in a hurricane, whereas a coastal marsh absorbs the surge of water in a way that lets life continue to flourish. This analogy has something important to teach us about urban streets.
Read MoreBringing a neighborhood back from the brink of ruin, one building at a time, is hard, thankless work—like raising bees when you could just go buy a jar of honey. But when it works, each successful project helps “pollinate” the surrounding area with the seeds of revival, in a virtuous cycle.
Read MoreDenton, Texas seemed to be on the verge of an important step toward financial resilience: allowing its core neighborhoods to incrementally evolve and provide much-needed new housing. Now, is the city on the verge of moving in the wrong direction instead?
Read MoreNow that my city’s downtown is starting to thrive, we’re facing a new problem: a barrage of attempts to move centrally-located public facilities to unwalkable, suburban (and even undeveloped) areas.
Read MoreOnce a year, Ben & Jerry’s gives away ice cream for free—and people line up around the block because the price is so low. There’s a lesson here about urban roads and congestion.
Read MoreWe conclude our podcast greatest-hits series by revisiting a 2013 conversation with Chris Gibbons, the originator of Economic Gardening. Helping home-grown companies expand—rather than importing jobs from elsewhere—Economic Gardening is the essence of a Strong Towns approach to economic development.
Read MoreWe have a lot of work ahead at Strong Towns to meaningfully engage people of color and to grow the racial diversity of our movement. We’re committed to doing that work.
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