Here are four ways that walking your dog—or a loaner pup from your local rescue group—can give you a unique insight into how your place can get a little more resilient.
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If the city fixes the street outside of your home and increases the value of your real estate, you should have to pay the city back some of that windfall…right?
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As a planner by training, I’m disappointed to see the American Planning Association parrot propaganda about the supposed need for a flood of new federal money for infrastructure. This approach is not conducive to good planning.
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When we take the steps that make our communities more financially resilient, we often make them healthier too. Just ask Dan Burden of Blue Zones: an organization that works with cities and towns across the country to help people lead healthier lives.
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The desperate need to fill pension shortfalls may be wreaking havoc on the financial system.
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The values often labeled “urbanism” are really about living the kind of locally-centered life that’s easier on your wallet, the environment, and your health—and that makes our communities more prosperous and resilient as well. But do you need to move downtown to be an urbanist? Absolutely not.
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Many of the cities we live in are under intense economic, social, and environmental stress. But how do we start to change the local planning status quo when the public doesn’t trust planners or policy experts?
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States have been neglecting basic road repairs in favor of costly road expansion. Yet the problem is still misleadingly framed by some as primarily about not having enough money.
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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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How do we create the kind of places that are lovable, distinctive, and will retain their value over time, rather than being discarded like cheap furniture when their age starts to show? This week’s top stories offer some insights.
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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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