In this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck responds to a recent Substack column that criticized the Strong Towns stance on the Suburban Experiment and infrastructure spending.
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Are urban areas really more financially sustainable than suburbs? Do urban areas inherently have higher infrastructure costs? Here's what Strong Towns actually says about the Suburban Experiment and infrastructure spending.
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Philadelphia's Porchfest festival showcases the vibrant community spirit of West Philly, and residents proved the endurance of that spirit last month. After the city refused to close streets to car traffic, residents did so themselves to keep festival attendees safe. Admirable, but it should never have been necessary.
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Erin Joyce, the mayor of Braintree, Massachusetts, joins host Tiffany Owens Reed today to discuss what it’s like to build strong towns as an elected official.
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Biking infrastructure is important to building a thriving biking culture, but it isn’t everything. Community members can make cycling more accessible and appealing in other ways, too. Here are some of the ways Winnipeg, Manitoba, is doing it.
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You’ve heard of YIMBYs and NIMBYs, but have you heard of YIGBYs? The “Yes In God’s Backyard” movement focuses on leveraging land owned by religious institutions to alleviate the housing crisis.
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Parking reform isn't just about eliminating spaces; it's about unlocking a city's potential. From spurring development to enabling affordable housing, parking reform can benefit many people in diverse ways. Anchorage, Alaska, is experiencing this firsthand.
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Conversations with local decision-makers are an essential part of advocating for stronger cities. To make the best use of this sometimes-rare opportunity, you need to know the right questions to ask.
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We can’t wait for big government housing programs to fix the housing affordability crisis — in fact, they can actually make things worse. But don't lose hope. Local governments have the power to tackle the housing crisis in ways that actually work.
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Many people believe that, with some zoning changes, large-scale development will be the true key to the housing crisis. This isn’t the case. Large-scale development worsens the issues that caused the crisis in the first place. Here’s a few of the ways incremental development is better for cities than large-scale.
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Wisconsin offered a $3 billion dollar subsidy to Foxconn and were promised a $10 billion factory and 13,000 jobs in exchange. Instead, the locals got three empty buildings, a few hundred jobs, and a mountain of debt. Sorry, Wisconsin. As Ronny Chieng from the Daily Show put it, “You got catfished.”
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Ilana Preuss is the founder and CEO of Recast City, a program that helps cities build strong downtowns by empowering small-scale manufacturers. Today, she joins host Tiffany Owens Reed to discuss the importance of small-scale manufacturing and her experiences as a city builder.
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Safety practices and education are vital for children, but when that education is focused solely on personal responsibility and is enforced through shame, it can do more harm than good. Personal responsibility can only go so far: For streets to truly be safe, changes to the transportation system itself are needed.
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Family Dollar is shutting down many of its urban stores, while Dollar General is expanding in rural areas. This week’s episode explores the reasons behind their differing success and the effect dollar stores have on neighborhoods.
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When residents ask why they should allow more housing in their neighborhood, advocates often default to altruism, suggesting that an influx of people will have negative effects but that giving them a place to live is still the right thing to do. But there are a myriad of ways that an increased population can improve your quality of life. Here are some of them.
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Sometimes, cities say that they’re taking an incremental approach when they’re really just breaking a master plan down into steps. This method lacks the creative, bottom-up nature that makes incremental development so resilient, tricking people into believing they’re making their city stronger when they’re really not.
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Working with your local engineers and transportation officials can be challenging. How do you collaborate with people who are often responsible for the bad infrastructure in your place? One successful group focuses on bringing positivity and concrete suggestions to the conversation.
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Incremental development is the most resilient and financially responsible way for communities to grow and improve. Town builder Monte Anderson joins us today on Upzoned to talk about his experience as an incremental developer and the important principles of the field.
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Criminalizing homelessness is often an attempt to make public spaces safe and comfortable. It fails miserably, at the cost of persecuting some of the most vulnerable members of the population. If cities want a real, sustainable solution to a homelessness crisis, they need to address the underlying cause: North America’s broken housing system.
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North American road infrastructure signals to drivers that there shouldn’t be nondrivers in an area, so they fail to see the people who are actually there. This increases the risk of collisions and prevents reform. If cities are to have safer streets, they need to start seeing the people who use them.
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