Here are the immediate steps every community should be taking to respond to the pandemic.
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The myth of capitalism, social alienation and the rise of populism, a young entrepreneur creating opportunities for other entrepreneurs, and more. Here are 7 of our favorite podcasts of 2020.
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People are running the numbers in their cities and confronting head-on the absurd un-affordability of the Suburban Experiment.
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A lot of bad public engagement sets the impossible goal of identifying the community’s “vision” for a place by asking people about their preferences—usually with questions they’re ill-equipped to answer. There’s a better way.
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An unproductive intersection looks different to different people: engineers, departments of transportation, tax assessors, etc. But bringing it to life starts with seeing it through still someone else’s eyes.
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Accessory Commercial Units spur entrepreneurship and build a city’s prosperity. The problem? Many zoning laws make them functionally illegal.
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Centralized systems are good at getting us cheap food, cars, and toilet paper—until they’re not. They’re also really bad at isolating deadly outbreaks.
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Large swaths of our cities were built to reflect a post-World War Two boom that was an economic anomaly. But that party is long over…and, in many ways, wasn’t that great to begin with. So why do we keep romanticizing the past rather than thinking about the cities we need now?
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Until America gets its infrastructure priorities straight, the last thing we need is to pump more spending into a broken system. 2019 felt like a breakthrough year for our call for #NoNewRoads, one in which we had more influential allies and receptive ears on this point than ever before.
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Most neighborhoods face a stark choice between the trickle or the fire hose: either virtually no new development or investment, or cataclysmic change that leaves a place unrecognizable. We need to get out of this destructive dichotomy.
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Two simple photos show the difference between a street simply designated 20 miles per hour, and one actually designed to be safe. We can't regulate our way to safety.
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Can a humble corner bookstore make your city wealthier and more resilient? These small businesses have surprising staying power—and in many ways are an indicator species of a strong neighborhood.
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Affordable housing shortages in California (and other states) are worsened by a go-big-or-go-home model of development: we throw up so many barriers in the face of incremental change that the only building projects that remain viable are huge, complicated ones with many possible points of failure.
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Professional planners are trained to yearn for tighter urban design controls, as if cities without comprehensive, top-down planning would devolve into chaos and disorder. In reality, cities evolve according to mechanisms that allow us to gradually discover optimal urban design across time.
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Why all these new storefronts are sitting vacant.
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Local governments can’t take on more and more promises without generating enough wealth to meet those obligations—not without a reckoning. We need a radical revolution in how we plan, manage, and inhabit our cities, counties, and neighborhoods. We need a Strong Towns approach.
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For a struggling city, negative perceptions from with the community can send it into a spiral of decline. It takes a major shift in perspective to get the city back on track.
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Incremental approaches are often cheaper, faster, or have less risk than sudden approaches. Let’s explore different types of incrementalism.
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The closing of the mall’s anchor store exposes how fragile the community’s business model is, providing an opening to shift approach.
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What does it take to be a small-scale developer in a struggling part of town? To put your money where your mouth is and participate in incremental neighborhood revitalization? One of our staffers knows firsthand.
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