2023 Strong Towns National Gathering: Come Join Your Movement!

Do your family’s eyes glaze over when you start talking about the traditional development pattern? Are your coworkers backing away from your pronouncements on incremental housing? Strong Towns has just the place for you.

At the Strong Towns National Gathering, you’ll be in a room full of fellow citizen-advocates, the Strong Towns team, and experts from across the movement talking about the issues that impact our lives and communities. We’ll be learning together from activists on the front lines how to bring bottom-up change to the places where we live and work. 

This year’s National Gathering will be May 30–31 in Charlotte, North Carolina. It kicks off with an opening reception the evening of May 30, followed by a full-day program on May 31. Our event will be followed in the same location by the 2023 Congress for the New Urbanism (separate registration required). 

The keynote speaker will be Majora Carter, who has written movingly about the need for advocates to stay and fight for their hometowns and communities. 

Attendees can focus on a specific track—Incremental Housing, Local Conversations, Safe and Productive Streets, and Strong Towns Basics—or mix and match according to your interests. You’ll also get an in-person presentation of Strong Towns 101 and Confessions of a Recovering Engineer from Founder Charles Marohn.

Sessions led by top-notch friends and allies of Strong Towns include the benefits of eliminating parking requirements with Tony Jordan and Jane Wilberding; how single-family zoning stifles housing options with M. Nolan Gray; Just Accounting with Lanier Hagerty and the team from Urban3; and 12 steps to create conditions for incremental developers to succeed with Monte Anderson, Mike Keen, Gracen Johnson and Bernice Radle. 

We’ll also be announcing the winner of the 2023 Strongest Town Contest, which celebrates communities across North America that are facing their challenges head on. As part of the prize, this year’s winning delegation will be in attendance to receive the award. 

The past year has been a big one for Strong Towns, with new initiatives we’re excited to share and grow. You’ll hear from Director of Community Action Edward Erfurt about the Crash Analysis Studio, which connects local advocates and safety experts to analyze deadly accidents and seek design solutions, and how you can bring the program to your town. Community Builder John Pattison will discuss the growing number of Strong Towns Local Conversations in North America and how members can find each other and pursue bottom-up changes close to home. 

“We welcome Strong Towns members and passionate local advocates to our National Gathering, and hope that you—and we—will gain important knowledge and tactics to bring back to the communities you’re striving to change,” says Rachel Quednau, Strong Towns’ Program Director.

Learn more about how to register, including discounts for early birds and Strong Towns members, here: Attend the Strong Towns National Gathering. The full National Gathering agenda will also be published soon.