What the Explosion of the Dollar Store Says About the State of Our Cities

The dollar store might seem like a smaller, friendlier alternative to the big box. But its proliferation tells us something powerful about the way we build our towns.

Podcast, Marohn, Top StoryStrong TownsJanuary 4, 2019upzoned

The Pass/Fail Nature of Suburban Development

When building our cities, we have come to value efficiency over redundancy. Want to see this become a problem? Just wait until it snows.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnJanuary 2, 2019suburban development pattern, snow, efficiency, redundancy

Would You Move to a New City for $10,000?

Tulsa, OK is the latest city to offer remote workers some tempting incentives if they’ll move there for only a year. Is this a smarter approach to economic development, or do our cities need to #dothemath?

Podcast, Marohn, Top StoryStrong TownsDecember 14, 2018Economic Gardening

Best of 2018: The More We Grow, the Poorer We Become

Local governments can’t take on more and more promises without generating enough wealth to meet those obligations—not without a reckoning. We need a radical revolution in how we plan, manage, and inhabit our cities, counties, and neighborhoods. We need a Strong Towns approach.

The Best Books I Read in 2018

Here’s Chuck Marohn’s annual list of his favorite books he read in 2018.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnDecember 13, 2018

Best of 2018: The Real Reason Your Local Mall is Failing

The closing of the mall’s anchor store exposes how fragile the community’s business model is, providing an opening to shift approach.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnDecember 12, 2018shopping malls, big box stores, value per acre, best of strong towns

Best of 2018: Automated Vehicles Will Make Our Streets Worse

Automated vehicle technology will do nothing to make our streets better places to be.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnDecember 11, 2018auto-oriented, cars, technology, self driving cars, best of strong towns

Why Do People Keep Being Killed on This Road?

Tragedy predictably occurs when our road designs combine high speeds and randomness.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnDecember 10, 2018safety

Best of 2018: Winning Is the Absence of Losing

The most important thing for a local government is to avoid ruin.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnDecember 7, 2018orderly but dumb, antifragility, risk, best of strong towns

Best of 2018: Most Public Engagement is Worthless

It is the experiences of real people that should guide our planning efforts. Their actions are the data we should be collecting, not their stated preferences.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnDecember 6, 2018community engagement, strong towns approach, best of strong towns

Goodbye AICP?

I don’t know why I’m an certified planner anymore. More importantly, it’s not clear to me why the world will be a better place if I am.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnDecember 3, 2018urban planning

Here's How to Build a Parking Garage

It is backward to think of a parking ramp as a catalyst for success; it is the outcome of success. There is no shortcut to building a Strong Town, but lots of rewards for the effort.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnNovember 26, 2018small towns, incremental development

You Drive Your Kids to School Because the Neighborhood Doesn't Feel Safe. The Neighborhood Doesn't Feel Safe Because Everybody Drives.

School officials in my town claim our neighborhoods are too unsafe for their children to walk to school. Yet the actual key to safety lies in numbers. We need designs that make it so more, not fewer, people will choose to walk.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnNovember 19, 2018Safe Routes to Schools, safety

It's 2018. Does your city still have minimum parking requirements?

There is no justification for a city to maintain minimum parking requirements, to force others to build parking, or to build parking for others to use at no charge.

#BlackFridayParking, Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnNovember 19, 2018parking minimums

What Do You Do When You Need to Change Everything?

If America is going to be a strong country, it must first have strong cities, towns and neighborhoods.

MarohnCharles MarohnNovember 13, 2018

Ten Years, Getting Stronger

It’s always a small handful of people that change the world. Today, let it be you.

MarohnCharles MarohnNovember 12, 2018

Carmel is Not a Strong Town

In an earlier Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck Marohn chatted with urban analyst Aaron Renn, who made the case for Carmel, Indiana’s massive debt as an investment in a high-quality place for posterity. In today’s episode, Chuck pushes back more forcefully on the assumptions underlying Carmel’s big gamble.