Strong Towns Week in Review
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The ripple effects of outdated parking mandates are felt everywhere, making it harder to build the kind of communities people want and need. North Carolina might be about to change that.
Officials in Ottowa, Canada, are showing that local governments don’t need to accept expensive and unproductive projects, even if they have a lot of momentum behind them.
Attendees of last week’s National Housing Supply Summit hoped it would provide insights for how Washington can tackle America’s housing crisis. But expecting Washington to fix problems it helped create isn’t optimism; it’s a paradox.
Cities thrive when residents actively participate in conversations about their future. Whether through public comment or the written word, speaking up isn’t just an act of protest—it’s an act of stewardship. Here’s how one Albuquerque resident advocated for more housing in his city.
Recent publications from The New York Times and the Civitas Institute prove that years of work by the growing Strong Towns movement — by people like you — is successfully spreading a forward-thinking approach to building towns.
Most of today’s property tax systems discourage productive use of land while rewarding neglect. Minnesota is considering a policy that would change that.
Sean Hayford Oleary is a city council member in Richfield, Minnesota. Today, he and Norm discuss his efforts to reintroduce duplexes, reduce parking mandates, and support walkable neighborhoods. (Transcript included.)
When cities fall into the Growth Ponzi Scheme, they prioritize rapid, short-term growth that strains city resources and reduces long-term prosperity. Residents of Bentonville, Arkansas, are feeling those effects firsthand.
Chuck is joined by Shayne Kavanagh, senior manager of research for the Government Finance Officers Association. Kavanagh discusses the role of finance officers as “decision architects” and shares some tactics they can use to improve their processes. (Transcript included.)
The Finance Decoder reveals the long-term trends hidden behind annual balanced budgets. For Kansas City, those trends are deeply problematic.
Kip Santos is a trained civil engineer and construction manager who quit his job to build Local Conversations full-time. Now he splits his time between the U.S. and Canada, nurturing the groups he's founded and building missing middle housing. (Transcript included.)