Finance Decoder

The Check-Up Your City Can't Afford to Skip

Visualize the financial trajectory of your city.

Understand whether your city is on track to keep its development, service, and growth promises.

Recommended by national municipal finance institutions.

Get the Finance Decoder

Years of budgeting, clarified in an afternoon.

Input a handful of your city's publicly-available financial numbers and automatically produce 7 indicator charts to visualize the financial trajectory of your place.

Unlock the Financial Trajectory of Your Place.

Get access to the the Finance Decoder worksheet, instructions, tutorials, and templates to share your results.

Get the Finance Decoder

A Bottom-Up Map of Fiscal Trajectories

The fiscal health of our cities isn’t shaped by a single budget or council vote—it’s the result of decades of decisions, policies, and development patterns. Across the country, Strong Towns advocates are using the Finance Decoder to better understand their communities’ fiscal trajectories.

Explore their work, share your own, and help build a growing map of local insight.

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Finance in a Strong Town

Your city can't afford to keep its promises. Strong Towns is uncovering why, and offering a way forward.

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