An interview with Steve Nygren, developer of Serenbe, Georgia, about how Serenbe is unlike conventional suburbia, and why Nygren thinks it holds lessons for how all of our communities could achieve a better way of life at a lower cost.
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The drumbeat from the lobbying organizations behind Infrastructure Week is, as usual, that we need to build more in America—and it scarcely seems to matter what we build, where, or why. This view is as shortsighted and dangerous as ever.
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Liberals and conservatives have fundamentally different ways of looking at the world. So why do so many of them agree that we need more infrastructure spending—even if it might make our town weaker?
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Two new additions to the Strong Towns Knowledge Base this week cover how to begin revitalizing a downtown in need of it, and how to approach recovery from a natural disaster through a Strong Towns lens.
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There is incredible potential for a rebirth and renaissance in older urban neighborhoods. One great way to accelerate that renaissance: adding value through barrier-free design for people with disabilities. A new competition in Cleveland aims to showcase innovative approaches.
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A new study provides the first experimental evidence that better street lighting has a cause-and-effect relationship with reduced crime. Lighting is an example of the kind of low-cost, high-returning public investment that’s all around us… but that our cities too often ignore.
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Morgan Leichter-Saxby—co-founder at Pop-Up Adventure Play—shares how you can create low cost, low risk places to play in your neighborhood, including how to pitch the idea to your neighbors, how to commit to an incremental approach, and how Pop-Up Adventure Play can help throughout the process.
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We’re still months away from being able to share your founder’s first book with you. But that doesn’t mean we can’t give you a quick peek behind the scenes.
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What exactly is the “human scale”? And have you ever thought about just how little of the public space in your city is designed at that scale—even in places you think of as walkable?
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More than ever of what we make is produced with little thought to its durability. But what happens when we apply this mindset to the very communities we live in?
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As an engineer, I once had property owners turn out en masse to oppose a project I was working on that would fix their potholed street and broken sidewalks. Find out why—and one key policy change that might have led to a different response.
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Not everything in a Strong Town can be about dollars and cents. The finances constrain us—they are an important check on our avarice—but the things that make a place worth loving go far beyond the balance sheet.
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Could it make sense to put the onus on pedestrians to ensure their own safety—in Honolulu’s case, by considering making it illegal to cross the street outside of a crosswalk after dark? Maybe, but only if we had a system that actually gave people on foot equal opportunity to get around safely and conveniently. We don’t.
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See the latest content in the Strong Towns Knowledge Base.
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There’s nothing like taking to the streets on foot to understand the place you live a bit better. In this spirit, the work of Strong Towns helped inform a program of “walking audits” at a Florida university that teaches students to recognize how urban design affects both the financial and ecological sustainability of our cities.
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My city council has been offered an impossible choice: spend millions of dollars we don’t have repairing our historic water tower, or permanently destroy an iconic landmark and a piece of our history. But there is a third option.
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Alix Taylor—Manager of Water Programs at Green Communities Canada—shares how to depave neglected concrete in your own neighborhood, including how to get your neighbors involved in the process, how to pitch the idea to city leaders, and how to find sites in your neighborhood optimal for depaving.
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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.
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My 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.
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A 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.
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