Echoes of Greatness, Seeds of Change Along St. Paul’s Grand Avenue

East Grand Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota, manages to maintain a unique and magical sense of place even while being car-centric. Here’s how it does it, and how other cities can design their built environments to capture that sense of place.

Top StoryAdam SchwalbeJune 4, 2024people centered places, end parking mandates and subsidies, safe and productive streets, minnesota, human scale

Reflections on Seaside

What does and doesn’t work about the “great-granddaddy” of New Urbanism?

Top StorySeth ZerenApril 22, 2022urbanism, New Urbanism, urban planning, urban design, placemaking, human scale, incrementalism, incremental development, incremental, traditional development pattern, walkability, florida

In Hospitable Cities, You’re Welcomed by Design

Some neighborhoods can feel downright hostile, especially to outsiders. But many places have become this way due to inhospitable design, not inhospitable people.

Top Story, OwensTiffany Owens ReedMarch 31, 2022placemaking, urban design, Neighborhood Design, suburban experiment, human scale, walkability, public space, food trucks, neighborhood revitalization, traditional development pattern, texas, neighborhoods

The Pedalling Pastor

This bicycling pastor’s new book offers valuable advice for any Strong Towns advocate—religious or otherwise.

Top StoryJay StangeMarch 9, 2022biking, bikes, bikeability, bicycling, Faith Featured, faith communities, human scale, walkability, transportation, active transportation, car-lite

The Spooky Wisdom of Pompeii

What lessons can we glean about anti-fragility and human psychology from a 2,000-year-old fast food restaurant?

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnAugust 23, 2021history, spooky wisdom, Strong Towns Book, traditional development pattern, human scale, psychology, europe

Delight per Acre

The same design principles behind Japanese gardens can make the building of resilient and financially strong places into a joy, rather than a burden.

Herriges, Top StoryDaniel HerrigesJuly 21, 2021aesthetics, urban design, human scale, traditional development pattern, fine-grained, architecture, value per acre, asia

Miyazaki's Urbanism

Globally beloved animator Hayao Miyazaki has a secret he’s been hiding in plain sight for years: he’s one of the best urban designers and thinkers of our time.

Top StoryMatthew RobareJuly 14, 2021urbanism, urban design, human scale

Crime Scene Photos

In the postwar era, North American cities bulldozed whole blocks and neighborhoods for freeways, parking, and urban renewal. Old fire insurance maps can help us piece together what happened.

Herriges, Top StoryDaniel HerrigesMay 5, 2021history, maps, human scale, urban renewal

Is This Development "Out of Scale"?

It’s an article of faith among many that big and tall buildings don’t belong around small and short buildings. But does this idea actually stand up to scrutiny?

HerrigesDaniel HerrigesJuly 22, 2020urban design, human scale, granularity, incrementalism, california

How Did We Get Used to Out-of-Scale Cities?

What exactly is the “human scale”? And have you ever thought about just how little of the public space in your city is designed at that scale—even in places you think of as walkable?

Top StoryFelix LandryMay 7, 2019human scale, walkability, auto-oriented

Strong Streets: Syracuse's Armory Square

Take a photo tour of some great streets in Syracuse and see what makes the traditional development pattern work so well on the ground.

Top StoryArian HorbovetzOctober 30, 2018human scale, traditional development pattern

Novelty Colonies: Demerits and Distinctions

Novelty Colonies are unusual, themed settlements that promise the resident an alternative to the vinyl-sided raised ranch houses of suburbia. However, the charm of these settlements is superficial, and the good ideas they do offer would be better incorporated into our existing towns.

Top StoryKyle SitzmanOctober 10, 2018suburban retrofit, human scale

Introducing the Incremental Development Alliance

We're about to unwind a huge experiment and it's not likely to go smoothly. Anything we want to accomplish is going to require extraordinary creativity, resourcefulness and political prowess. That's where the Incremental Development Alliance comes in.