You might get more house for your money in an outer-ring suburb. But if you have to own and maintain multiple cars, are you better off? Common measures of housing affordability don’t include transportation costs, and so they fail to capture a realistic view of the true cost of living in certain places.
Read MoreMy hometown of Plano, Texas is the midst of a bubble. Everything seems fine! Taxes are low. The city provides great services. It has an AAA bond rating. The music is still playing, and therefore everyone must remain dancing. But we have a looming problem: staggering long-term infrastructure liabilities that we haven’t even fully accounted for.
Read MoreA bill that has passed the Florida Senate proposes to build over 300 miles of new toll roads deep into rural areas of the state. Proponents claim it’s necessary to prepare for coming population growth. They couldn’t be more wrong.
Read MoreEquipped 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 MoreIn this week’s top stories, we explored how to build momentum toward getting rid of your city’s pesky parking minimums; questioned why on earth it should ever take years to get a building permit (hint: it shouldn’t); and examined some of the strange-but-true aspects of complex cities—among them, narrowing roads can make traffic better (no, really), and building high-end housing can help low-income people find homes (no, really).
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 MoreIt’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.
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 MoreStrengthening the most financially productive parts of our cities is not easy work, and this week’s top stories explored different tools for that work, from design standards to missing-middle housing to ensuring that core government services are actually located in the core. We also published an important message from our president, reaffirming our commitment to growing the racial diversity of the Strong Towns movement.
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.
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