Announcing a New Book from Strong Towns
At Strong Towns, we want what you want: to live in a place where transportation is getting better over time, not worse. The transportation system should be serving you and your neighbors. So why does it feel like it’s the other way around? A new book from Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn will answer that question, and provide a myriad of responses that local leaders can put into action right now.
Introducing: Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town — coming out September 8, 2021. You can preorder a copy today on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Bookshop and we’ll send some special goodies your way soon as a thank you.
About the Book
Like you, we at Strong Towns are frustrated by the broken transportation system. What you suspect to be true about transportation in America is true...but it’s also probably worse than you imagine.
Strong Towns founder and president Charles Marohn is a professional engineer and land use planner with 20 years of experience. In his work, he saw firsthand how the conventional approach to traffic engineering is making people less safe, bankrupting towns and cities, destroying the fabric of communities, and worsening the problems (like congestion) engineers had set out to solve. He launched Strong Towns in 2009 to advocate for a smarter, more resilient, and more fiscally responsible approach. Over the last 12 years, Strong Towns has grown into an international movement of people from all walks of life who are challenging the status quo and changing how we build cities in the United States and Canada.
In Confessions of a Recovering Engineer, Marohn pulls back the curtain on the North American transportation system. He explains how transportation got so bad, and why it keeps getting worse. He writes about the deadly toll of bad design, why the conventional approach is putting cities on the road to insolvency, and why public transit is in such trouble. He also talks about how transportation can be fixed—and why fixing it will involve not just engineers, but local residents and officials who have become effective and empowered advocates, connected with others to make real change.
No one should be consigned to living in a community where transportation is getting worse while costing more. Rather than being a burden, transportation should fit with your life. It is possible to build a transportation system that makes you, your family, and your community safer and more prosperous. This book will show you how.
Ways to Get Involved
There are many ways to get involved in this book release and be part of a movement for better transportation in our cities and our country.
1. Bring the Confessions Book Tour to your city.
Charles Marohn will be traveling the country for virtual and in-person events this fall during a Confessions Book Tour, discussing key ideas in the new book and sharing a Strong Towns vision for financially resilient transportation systems. If you’re interested in bringing Charles to speak in your town, fill out this form to get started.
2. Take our Strong Towns Academy course, Aligning Transportation with a Strong Towns Approach.
Want to really dig into transportation issues and learn a better way forward? Sign up for our online course, Aligning Transportation with a Strong Towns Approach. Led by Charles Marohn, this class teaches engineers, planners, elected officials, and local advocates about the foundations of our current transportation system and how to make productive transportation investments with limited available resources. The course topics provide a companion to the forthcoming book and an opportunity to go deep on what matters most.
3. Submit your confession.
Are you an engineer or planner who’s had to make some tough calls, approve dubious projects or do something else that made you frustrated with your profession? Submit it anonymously in our “confessional.” Later this summer, we’ll feature some of those stories and get a conversation going about problems and solutions in the engineering field.
4. Sign up to stay in the loop.
We’ll have a lot more news coming soon regarding book-related events, exclusive offers, and a special Book Launch Team we’re forming soon. Sign up for email below to make sure you don’t miss a thing!