Strong Towns

Your city may have given you the green light for that backyard cottage, but there’s someone else who might have a say in what gets built.

Cities don't need more public meetings.

By getting involved early, members of Stronger Denton helped bring a new approach to crash response into their city's Vision Zero plan.

10 points to consider when navigating these noisy debates at election time.

Cities say they want public participation, but too often, they crush the ability of citizens to actually participate in neighborhoods.

A looming backlog of housing repairs threatens the “housing abundance” agenda just as much as NIMBYs, a new book argues.

We didn't lose housing production in 2008 by accident.

One extra home can change the rules, the costs, and who can afford to build.

Loving a city means caring for what we inherit and sharing the work of leaving it better.

What peak flow can teach us about building more housing with the infrastructure we already have.

Showing up to city hall costs a few minutes and the adrenaline of speaking in public.

How can incremental development solve the housing crisis when each effort feels too small to make a difference?

New housing can make rents lower than they otherwise would have been.

Seeking out ways to build more beauty in our lives.

The difference between landscaping that covers up our mistakes and landscaping that helps create a place.

What communities and families can do to give children more independence, stronger relationships, greater responsibility, and a place to belong.

But they’re wrong about why.

A new database shows how the design of a road decides whether travel money stays in a community or leaves it.

What if communities had more control over their transportation priorities?

A federal court has answered a question that matters for every professional willing to challenge the practices of their own profession.

A simple way for cities to see whether duplexes, fourplexes, and sixplexes actually fit through the regulations.

A highway can get wider without the underlying problem getting smaller.

Post Falls is growing rapidly.

Houston's public transit upgrades during the World Cup show how a city can take the next smallest step toward transportation improvements by using the infrastructure it already has.

Expertise gives us a lens, but every lens also filters.

We get to housing affordability when cities function like ecosystems, not algae in a food chain of governments.

The three traps that keep us from building better places.

Find out in these conversations about practical, creative ways to make your community stronger.

A dangerous Minnesota roundabout shows what happens when engineers preserve future traffic capacity at the expense of safety today.

How a flawed 1926 ruling still undermines American values, ingenuity and self-reliance.

It's not spending versus taxes.

Every fatal crash leaves two lives permanently altered: the person who died, and the person who now has to live with having taken another person’s life.

Strong Towns says "yes" to big buildings near transit stations.

A Rhode Island town discovered that the strongest foundation for a comprehensive plan wasn't a list of projects, but a shared understanding of what was worth protecting.

How one citizen and one mayor showed what local government is supposed to be.

When borrowed authority disappears, local leadership has to take its place.

Community revitalization depends on accountability, but it also depends on giving the first people willing to invest a realistic chance to succeed.

When a crash happens, at first glance we might blame the driver, then perhaps the designer.

Austin's falling rents have become a canonical story.

Smart Growth America’s newest report shows pedestrian deaths hovering near 40-year highs.

Before asking who should pay for rebuilding a street, ask whether we're rebuilding more than we can afford.

What if the most effective code enforcement for property management didn't stop at violations, but instead pointed people toward solutions?

Florida is walking a road California paved in 1978 — toward higher taxes, more state control, and less say for the cities caught in between.

Faith institutions already own land and want to help address community needs — can this include housing?

For decades, Phoenix mandated more parking than it needed.

The next step toward safer streets doesn't require waiting for the next planning cycle.

Public engagement works best when residents are experts in their own lives, not amateur urban planners.

What two days with Strong Towns and a budget week in Manatee County, FL, taught me.

A small safety tool helped shine a light on a much bigger challenge.

The housing debate needs fewer tribes and more curiosity.