In this episode of Upzoned, co-hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn talk about the challenges of building an Olympic Village and then repurposing it after the Games are finished.
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The practice of "grandfathering in" old buildings — letting them exist without meeting current building codes — is a good one. However, buildings lose this protected status if their owners perform renovations or additions, resulting in many buildings declining or sitting empty. It doesn't have to be this way.
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In Florida, flooding from Hurricane Debby exposes how the suburban pattern of development can worsen natural disasters and make it more difficult for residents to evacuate.
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In this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck is joined by Eric Goldwyn, a leading urban scholar and transit expert, to discuss the benefits of high-speed rail and how it could brought to the U.S.
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The U.S. is in a massive housing bubble fueled by widespread fraud. With banks incentivized to look away and Wall Street and Washington incentivized to keep housing prices artificially high, a bottom-up approach is the only hope for bringing sanity back to the housing market.
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Greenfield development may be appealing to people who are fighting the housing crisis, especially on cheap rural land. But if these developments are the only places with housing affordability, people who can't drive — whether due to age, disability, or finance — are out of luck. That's not a real solution.
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Seth Zeren, a neighborhood developer and founding member of Strong Towns, returns to The Bottom-Up Revolution to talk about the political side of incremental development and how to deal with issues like balancing needed development with increased property taxes.
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If you could ask anything from a downtown redevelopment project, what would it be? For a lot of people, it’s a place to sit. This may be surprising to some, but public seating plays an important role in creating prosperous communities. Here are a few of the reasons why.
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Indianapolis officials are encouraging residents to be involved in improving the city through a number of initiatives. In this Upzoned episode, Chuck and Abby discuss the benefits of these programs and the growing pains cities will face as they make this kind of positive change.
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The Interstate Bridge Replacement project, which is tasked with replacing a bridge that connects Washington and Oregon, is facing alarming delays, cost escalations and seemingly deceptive behavior from officials. These problems are symptoms of broader issues in North American transportation spending.
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Washington's Department of Transportation recently reported that they’re weight restricting another bridge because it’s becoming dangerously old. This is a symptom of a problem that stretches across North America: grossly misplaced priorities. It's time for a serious reevaluation of transportation spending priorities.
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In this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck takes a look at a recent fatal car crash that took place in Ontario, and the response from local law enforcement on Twitter/X.
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In many cities, officials primarily rely on traffic enforcement to prevent car crashes and fatalities. This is unsustainable and ineffective. If city officials want to make Vision Zero a reality, instead of a slogan, they must address the systemic issues that put everyone at risk.
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Winnipeg, Manitoba’s new transportation plan uses all the right words to seem like it’s prioritizing maintenance and multimodal transit, but its funding allocation tells a very different story.
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Erik Lowe is the founder of Reimagine Spokane, a grassroots group calling for safer streets and better transit, and the designer of the “Spokane Reimagined” plan, a $1 billion proposal to improve safety and connectivity in Spokane, Washington, over 20 years.
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Street trees are more than just beautiful additions to cities and towns — they also provide many economic and practical benefits, from prolonging the life of road surfaces to lowering energy bills. Here’s why you should invest in some trees.
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In this episode of Upzoned, host Abby Newsham is joined by Jason Carter-Solomon, an incremental developer and commercial lender in Kansas City, to talk about financing small-scale development.
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You decided to put your passion into action by running for office. Your message resonated with local voters and propelled you to victory. Congratulations! Now what? Here’s some advice from elected officials, as well as Strong Towns members and staff.
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The United States has attached a societal and even moral weight to the Suburban Experiment, codifying it across the country. But that wasn’t always the case. Many beloved and iconic building styles are incremental, and they’re proof that America can return to a more resilient way of building.
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In this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck explains why federal and state government policies can’t solve the housing affordability crisis and how that power actually lies with local leaders.
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