Success Stories

Here’s how advocates in Omaha, Nebraska, got their Department of Public Works to complete a quick-build street safety project so fast that “it felt like waving a magic wand.” (Hint: Find out if your community has a business improvement district, stat.)

Build a bipartisan coalition. Launch a pilot project. Speak to the core issues facing your community. That’s how Spokane, Washington, was able to eliminate costly parking mandates. Here's the full story.

After a Crash Analysis Studio was conducted in Rochester, New York, the city quickly established safer street design standards. Now, the county has created a first-in-state Community Traffic Safety Team to proactively address citizens’ concerns regarding street safety.

We’ve assembled a guide to three towns and cities of varying sizes that have recently revised their parking regulations. That way, when you decide to pursue parking reform in your own community, you can use them as examples of how parking reform strengthens cities.

Since enacting broad housing reforms in 2019, Durham, North Carolina, has been experiencing an explosion of missing-middle housing and housing affordability. Here are the main reforms the city enacted and how they're helping it fight the housing crisis.

Everyone has an entry point on their journey to taking action for their place. For Bernice Radle, it was witnessing the steady depopulation of Buffalo, NY, and seeing a landscape of unused, unloved buildings headed for the wrecking ball.

Like so many places, Muskegon, MI, has a shortage of housing and a surplus of vacant lots. That’s why it’s enacted a program that allows it to redevelop those lots into affordable housing—at a low risk to the city. 

Like many U.S. towns, Maumee, OH, has a state highway that cuts through their Uptown. For decades, it’s been known as a dangerous road…but no longer: the city is taking back its streets and making them places for people, not cars.

Norfolk, NE, knows that people are the indicator species of a successful place, and it’s doing all it can to make its public spaces friendly to its people.

In 2015, Edmonton, a city of 1 million situated in the Canadian Prairies of Alberta, was the first city in the country to adopt Vision Zero—and they’ve taken that adoption seriously.

Local activists in Selma, NC, started small, but they’ve grown into a coalition of citizens, civic groups, and city leaders striving to improve housing, transportation, and the local economy.

In Capitola, California, residents erupted in protest after Debra Towne, a beloved local senior, was hit and killed walking across a dangerous stroad. And unlike in so many other places, the city actually responded.

When Chattanooga’s Local Conversation learned of a crash that took the lives of a mother and child and severely injured the father, the group channeled their mourning into mobilization.

In what’s anticipated to be a landslide, the people of Los Angeles just voted in favor of walking, biking, and transit. 

Tony Jordan of the Parking Reform Network and Chris Meyer, legislative assistant to Senator Omar Fateh, talk all things parking reform on this week’s episode of the Strong Towns Podcast.

Like so many other places, the city of Kalamazoo, MI, has been facing a cascade of housing challenges. Here’s how they’re tackling them using pre-approved housing plans.

Searching for a place where people work together and things actually get done? Look no further than Jasper, IN, where a gorgeous downtown renovation serves as an example of a place that’s “built by many hands.”

Minnesota legislators have introduced a bill that would eliminate minimum parking mandates statewide—and Strong Towns was there to cheer them on.

Sacramento City Council has unanimously approved a set of changes that will allow the California capital to meet its housing demands.

Local advocates in Langley, BC, are starting the conversations their city needs to hear if it wants to undo decades of investing in the Suburban Experiment.