Big boxes arguably helped to kill the classic main street. Can they also bring it back?

In this episode of our podcast It’s the Little Things, Jacob chats with Darren Smith—Founder, President, and CEO of Traipse—about how you can boost your historic business district with gamification, including how to gamification can boost tourism, get more traffic for merchants, and make your historic business district the destination it deserves to be.

In an earlier Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck Marohn chatted with urban analyst Aaron Renn, who made the case for Carmel, Indiana’s massive debt as an investment in a high-quality place for posterity. In today’s episode, Chuck pushes back more forcefully on the assumptions underlying Carmel’s big gamble.

In this episode of our podcast It’s the Little Things, Jacob chats with Strong Towns’s own Aubrey Byron about how to start your own bike advocacy group and have an impact on bike policy in your place.

Forget Barbie. What does the Millennial Dream House look like?

In this episode of our podcast It’s the Little Things, Jacob chats with Breanna Hawkins, Policy Director at the Los Angeles Food Policy Council, about pioneering healthy food initiatives in Los Angeles’s most food-impoverished neighborhoods.

This week on the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck talks with Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Aaron Renn about Carmel, Indiana, a city that has gone into nearly unparalleled amounts of debt in a bid to become Indianapolis’s premier suburb.

More and more, New York City is becoming a ghost town where only the super rich can afford to live, and retail can’t afford to stay open. But is simple greed the reason why?

In this episode of our podcast It’s the Little Things, Jacob chats with Bill Huston, crowdfunding legend (like, top 19 crowdfunding consultants in the world according to Inc. Magazine kind of legend). For over 15 years, Bill has helped Strong Citizens get funding for their big ideas.

In this week’s Upzoned podcast, Kea and Chuck discuss the new federal Opportunity Zones program. Is a big bucket of money what disinvested neighborhoods need? Or is using a federal program to develop a neighborhood like steering an ocean liner with a canoe paddle?

In this episode of our podcast It’s the Little Things, Jacob chats with Alissa Walker, urbanism editor at Curbed, about how you don’t have to be a professional urban designer to have an impact on the built environment. Documenting your own observations can capture the attention of your peers and inspire much-needed improvements to the livability of your city.

This week on the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck talks with Jase Wilson, the founder and CEO of Neighborly, about bringing small-scale investors back to the municipal bond market, empowering people to invest in the real, observed needs of communities they care about.

Do we need to fail in order to succeed? When our experiments go awry—in science or otherwise—should we be dismayed, or treat it as just as vital information as if our hypotheses had been confirmed? Check out the latest episode of our new podcast Upzoned to hear Kea Wilson and Chuck Marohn wax philosophical about failure.

In this episode of our new podcast It’s the Little Things, Jacob Moses chats with Nick Kittle, author of the recently released book Sustainovation: Building Sustainable Innovation in Government, One Wildly Creative Idea at a Time. Nick argues that—even in government—innovation is an attainable workplace culture that, when embraced, can create meaningful change in our cities, towns, and neighborhoods.

Are house flippers exactly what the Rust Belt needs to recover from decades of systemic disinvestment, or a dangerous speculative game that fragile places shouldn’t be playing? Check out the third episode of our new podcast Upzoned to hear Kea Wilson and Chuck Marohn hash out this topic.

Want to better your community but don’t know where to start? Enter It’s the Little Things: a Strong Towns podcast that gives you the wisdom and encouragement you need to take the small yet powerful actions that can make your city or town stronger.

This week on the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck talks with behavior change and sustainability expert Ruben Anderson about the good life, and how we fool ourselves into thinking we can use systematic rationality to create it for ourselves.

Check out the second episode of our new podcast Upzoned! Kea Wilson and Chuck Marohn dig into an article on a troubling trend: big box retailers in Minnesota think they’re paying too much in property taxes, and they’re asking for a cut. But that’s a hard pill to swallow for small towns.

Want to better your community but don’t know where to start? Enter It’s the Little Things: a Strong Towns podcast that gives you the wisdom and encouragement you need to take the small yet powerful actions that can make your city or town stronger.

Check out the first episode of our new podcast Upzoned! Each Friday, join Kea Wilson, Chuck Marohn, and occasional surprise guests to talk in depth about just one big story from the week in the Strong Towns conversation, right when you want it: now.

Want to better your community but don’t know where to start? Enter It’s the Little Things: a Strong Towns podcast that gives you the wisdom and encouragement you need to take the small yet powerful actions that can make your city or town stronger.

In the latest episode of the Strong Towns podcast, Chuck talks with Lynn Richards, President and CEO of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). The two discuss how CNU has evolved, and what its future might look like as an organization, event, and movement.

In the latest episode of the Strong Towns podcast, we share a conversation Chuck had at CNU 2018 with three of the geoanalytics wizards from Urban3. Hear the latest on their efforts to spread the message about where your city’s wealth is really coming from.

In this podcast episode, Chuck interviews Corie Brown, Zester Media co-founder and a writer on the food system, about the depopulation of rural Kansas, as mechanized agriculture reduces the need for farm labor, and the social toll that it is taking in isolated, shrinking towns.