Here’s how Portland, Oregon, is getting more housing built that blends into existing neighborhoods and earns the approval of nearby residents, all while increasing affordability and supporting the local community.
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Cities across North America are recognizing the value of preapproved plans. Here’s why they’re so appealing and how their implementation is affecting cities.
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The U.S. senior housing market is poised to shift from a surplus to a shortage in the next five years. In this episode, Abby and Norm Van Eeden Petersman, Strong Towns’ director of Movement Building, discuss the implications of this shift and how to give more options to seniors. (Transcript included.)
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Tulsa, Oklahoma, is joining a growing list of cities that have integrated preapproved plans into their housing toolkits. This approach makes it easier for small-scale developers to complete projects quickly and cheaply.
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In historic cities, land was treated as a scarce resource and every inch of it was used with ingenuity. This created productive and charming places that could meet the evolving needs of residents. Here are a few ways we can bring that traditional productivity and adaptable charm to modern cities.
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In this episode, Abby is joined by Chicago aldermen Matt Martin and Andre Vasquez to discusses the Western Avenue corridor study, one of the most ambitious planning efforts Chicago has seen in decades. (Transcript included.)
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Parking regulations impose unnecessary restrictions on adding new housing. Many cities recognize this problem but struggle with how to address it effectively. Dubuque, Iowa, offers a real-world example of both the problems and an effective response.
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When suddenly faced with paying his mortgage alone, Noah Tang of Bloomington, Illinois, went old school. He turned his spare rooms into monthly rentals for students in his college town. This helped him make ends meet and also helped him build community.
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In this episode, Abby and Chuck discuss a recent court ruling that confirmed Massachusetts has the authority to sue cities and towns that don’t comply with its multifamily zoning requirements near transit stations.
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Spencer Coyne is the mayor of Princeton, British Columbia. He joins this Bottom-Up Short to explain how he’s implementing the Strong Towns approach in his city, including how to incrementally reform a zoning code and how to do a lot with a small amount of funding.
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Chuck discusses housing with Cullum Clark, director of the Economic Growth Initiative at the George W. Bush Institute. They talk about why there is so much resistance to new development and ways that officials and advocates could engage with the public to reduce that resistance.
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For decades, we've been living under an unspoken grand bargain when it comes to housing. Most people don’t think about explicitly, but it shapes nearly every conversation we have about growth, change and affordability in our cities and towns. It’s time to change the conversation.
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In this episode, Chuck discusses the common misbelief that an incremental approach to housing development is inherently slow, what that means for major cities, and how to make incremental housing more appealing to people who don’t want their neighborhoods to change.
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I want to draw two insights relating human development to the way cities evolve. These insights are critical to understanding America’s housing crisis and our response to it — and why building housing in major cities can't meaningfully address the housing crisis.
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To escape the housing crisis, we need a lot of housing to be built quickly. The key isn't large, ponderous projects; it's fast, widespread incremental development. We know the types of units that can be scaled and we know how to build them. The only thing we need now is for cities to devote themselves to doing it.
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On this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck continues answering housing questions submitted by Ohio State University students, covering topics from building codes to local action.
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On this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck answers housing questions submitted by Ohio State University students, covering topics from the history of the housing market to financing housing development.
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Allowing housing units to be built on small or irregular lots is a gamechanger for cities that are fighting the housing crisis. Here’s why that allowance is so important and how three developers are using small units and creativity to bring more housing options to their communities.
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Modern zoning, building and fire codes make it impossible to build many of the types of housing that people actually want to live in. Reforming those codes to allow for single-stair construction can help undo some of this damage.
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In this episode, host Norm Van Eeden Petersman is joined by Ken Kunka, a consultant and coach for small-scale developers, to talk about the ways he helps people build stronger communities.
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