Creating the Tools for Building the World We Want To See
(Source: Unsplash/Dan Cristian Pădureț.)
The stated goal of Strong Towns, to completely change the development pattern of North America, is intentionally ambitious. It’s also why we insist that this can’t be a top-down project, but must play out in thousands of small changes in every community.
So, we’ve put a special emphasis on assembling tools and resources you can use to help change hearts, minds, and processes in your town. From using data to fortify your arguments, to finding great allies to join the cause, we’ve assembled a toolbox for motivated advocates and elected officials to put Strong Towns ideas into play close to home.
Make Your Streets Safer
The Strong Towns Crash Analysis Studio was created with a simple premise: Traditional crash investigations focus on assigning blame to one of the participants, but the Crash Analysis Studio—borrowing tactics from medical inquests—seeks to understand all the circumstances surrounding a particular crash, with the goal of fixing the safety problem at the scene so it doesn’t happen again. You can attend a session, nominate a crash to be examined, or take our structure and recreate a crash analysis session with local experts in your area (it doesn’t cost a thing, and its benefits may be priceless).
At the municipal level, one of the most effective ways to support street safety is to create a rapid response team and an ecosystem that supports short-term fixes over long-term studies. Cities including Cincinnati; Jersey City, New Jersey; and Hyattsville, Maryland, have made great strides in pedestrian and bicycle safety with this approach. Strong Towns has also assembled a tactical urbanism resource page, with hands-on instructions to deploy safety measures quickly and cheaply.
Use Your Land Productively
We’ve documented that car-centric, suburban-style development, such as the notorious case of Taco John’s, is less productive than a more traditional form occupying the same area. This argument, doing the research and the math yourself, is among the most compelling you can make to the people responsible for development in your city or town about where resources are allocated and which projects are approved. So, Strong Towns has provided guides to calculate the value per acre of neighborhoods in your area, along with instructions on how to turn it into a value per acre map.
Another instance where your DIY work could bolster your argument is doing the math on proposed development in your town. And you’ll find information and advice on how to fight costly parking mandates from our partners at the Parking Reform Network.
Generate More Housing
No single public or private entity can fix North America’s housing crisis. That’s why we’ve committed to enabling incremental development in literally every neighborhood, and keep our coverage focused on the places and people pursuing innovative solutions. We share crucial information with local advocates like the zoning reforms that will help their cities, the immediate benefits of a form-based code, case studies from cities that effectively commit to infill development, and how pre-approved plans can make towns more accessible for small-scale developers.
Connect With Allies
More than anything, reform in every community starts one conversation and connection at a time. In Strong Towns’ dreams, we’d have a Local Conversation in every city and town, filled with committed residents seeking to improve their places. We’ve got an ever-growing map of groups, and even more people who are seeking to start Local Conversations in the places that don’t yet have them. You can also find an active conversation in our social feeds on Facebook and LinkedIn, and our Community Action Lab is a chance to engage your town fully with the Strong Towns approach.
Ben Abramson is a Staff Writer at Strong Towns. In his career as a travel journalist with The Washington Post and USA TODAY, Ben has visited many destinations that show how Americans were once world-class at building appealing, prosperous places at a human scale. He has also seen the worst of the suburban development pattern, and joined Strong Towns because of its unique way of framing the problems we can all see and intuit, and focusing on local, achievable solutions. A native of Washington, DC, Ben lives in Venice, Florida; summers in Atlantic Canada; and loves hiking, biking, kayaking, and beachcombing.