The ideas behind Strong Towns began in my small town of Brainerd. A tour starting in Memphis is designed to bring them home.
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Strong Towns believes towns need to be obsessive about their revenues. But does that really mean building more revenue-generating prison centers?
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The best financial investments our cities can make are those that humbly respond to how people struggle.
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Think tanks and government agencies aren’t solving our housing crisis nearly as fast as our cities need. Should we let the public have a shot—and give the person with the winning idea a big prize if they can make a dent?
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California recently passed a statewide rent control bill. Will it protect tenants, alleviate the housing crisis, and strengthen communities? Or is it another massive #california intervention that will do little to clean up the mess made by the LAST massive intervention?
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Public officials trying to make their city’s street more humane are often thwarted by the professional engineers giving them advice. If that’s your city, it’s time to make a change.
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Patrick Deneen, author of the bestselling Why Liberalism Failed (hint: he doesn’t mean the political left), talks with our own Chuck Marohn about the political crisis facing Western societies, and how rediscovering a sense of rootedness in community—defaulting to loyalty over “looking for the exits”—might be the answer.
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The Strong America Tour starts this week with a swing through the Pacific Northwest. Here’s what to expect.
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The most successful companies iterate. Before they go “all-in” on a new product, they prototype, test, learn and adapt. If only there was a similar process cities could use before committing massive resources to something that may not work. Oh wait, there is! In defense of the much-maligned pilot project.
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We can destroy and rebuild all kinds of places and measure success in terms of Gross Domestic Product, but lets stop pretending that trading local wealth for national growth is a good thing.
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Hint: the Right isn’t any better.
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The unproductive use of infrastructure has put most cities, even those that are superficially prosperous, in a position where they won’t be able to afford to maintain what they’ve built. The signs of this crisis are everywhere—if you’re willing to look.
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The United States isn’t France, but there are still plenty of lessons to be learned—and myths to be busted—by looking at the way their streets are designed to build wealth.
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When my school district proposed tearing down buildings for parking, I and others suggested there were more creative and less destructive ways to solve these problems. We were scoffed at, and we lost. Hate to say, “I told you so,” but….
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Why does infrastructure cost so much to build in the U.S.? The fundamental reasons aren’t technical. We’ve structured our postwar economy to use overspending on infrastructure as a way to induce short-term growth.
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Chris Arnade’s Dignity is a striking look into the faces of “back row” America—the poor, the homeless, the addicted, the forgotten. And it’s a challenge to us as a society to design policies that respond to their needs and values.
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There is no such thing as a truly free market; the market exists within a system of rules and incentives. And in America today, that system privileges stability and efficiency at the federal level, at the expense of making our cities and towns fragile.
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Vision Zero aims to end all traffic deaths. Can they do it on a national scale?
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Pine Island, MN (population 3,000) has huge dreams, yet they can’t take care of their basic systems. Who pays the price?
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A video interview with Strong Towns founder Chuck Marohn describes the origins of the Strong Towns movement and how it helps cities—especially smaller ones—reclaim local control of their future stability and prosperity.
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