The Strong Towns Podcast

How do you actually implement a Strong Towns approach? The latest ebook from Strong Towns is The Local Leader's Toolkit: A Strong Towns Response to the Pandemic , a free guide for local leaders looking for a recovery plan for their community. This week is the Strong Towns Member Drive. Support the Strong Towns movement by going to www.strongtowns.org/membership .

In this special crossover edition of our It's the Little Things podcast, Strong Towns community builder Jacob Moses talks with Karl Fundenberger about his ten years of bike advocacy in Topeka.  As a bike advocate in his hometown of Topeka, Kansas, Strong Towns member Karl Fundenberger has long advocated for little bets to boost the bikeability of Topeka. Yet, as bike advocates across North America...

The global pandemic is laying bare all the fragility that has built up over decades within our society. These are scary times filled with uncertainty. It’s unclear what next month will bring, let alone next year. Strong Towns is a bottom-up revolution to rebuild American prosperity. Thousands of people across North America are using the Strong Towns approach to make their cities stronger and more...

If you’re like us, there are a few trusted guides you’ve looked to for help making sense of a world turned suddenly upside down. One of our guides has been James Howard Kunstler . The author of essential books like The Long Emergency, The Geography of Nowhere, and the World Made By Hand novels, Kunstler has for years been eerily prescient in his ability to imagine and interpret the future. Strong...

A couple weeks ago, the price of oil dipped below zero (negative $37.63, to be exact). This was unprecedented. Decreased demand due to COVID-19, the Russia-Saudi Arabia oil war, and near-full storage capacity—together, they briefly forced producers to pay others to take oil off their hands. At the same time, we started hearing reports of food producers dumping milk , plowing under lettuce , and sm...

Almost exactly one year ago , we chose Chuck Marohn’s 2013 interview with Chris Gibbons as one of the Strong Towns podcast’s eleven “greatest hits.” Why this episode from among several hundred choices? Not only because it’s a compelling listen, but because Gibbons’s approach to economic development — Economic Gardening — has become such a core concept for us. It’s like we said last year: [Economic...

A brief update from Chuck Marohn on the Strong Towns Academy and the absence of new podcasts on the feed. There is a lot happening in the world and at Strong Towns. We hope you are all safe and healthy.

Why is change so hard? In part, change is hard because our culture—our society, and our sense of our place in it—often prevents us from seriously considering options beyond the status quo. Every country and every culture on the planet is now confronting a common enemy. Why have some countries been more successful than others in bringing the coronavirus under control? One big factor: widespread use...

Luke Sims on why re-legalizing mixed-use neighborhoods in Winona has led to the kind of organic development that makes people happy, Winona's success in helping people start and grow businesses, and on lowering the barrier to entry -- both for entrepreneurs and homebuyers. Vote  in the semifinals of the Strongest Towns contest More information about the Strongest Towns contest

Sarah Caron and Michael Heuer talk about zoning changes that helped create housing options for people of all ages and abilities in Watertown, how switching to two-way streets (and ending parking minimums) boosted the already vibrant downtown, and Watertown's "secret weapon" in building a stronger community. Vote  in the semifinals of the Strongest Towns contest More information about the Strongest...

Christa Horne and Bob Hughes talk about finding the balance between attracting tourists (100,000 visit each year) and nurturing local industry, Hamilton's success in growing homegrown businesses, and a simple idea started in Hamilton that's become a nationwide movement in the fight against coronavirus. Vote  in the semifinals of the Strongest Towns contest More information about the Strongest Town...

Shauna El-Amin talks about the "build your own" philosophy that has helped Beloit grow its downtown one entrepreneur at a time, the coordinated effort to rehab once-blighted properties into homes and businesses people love, and how the impact one transformation can boost the morale of an entire neighborhood. Vote  in the semifinals of the Strongest Towns contest More information about the Stronges...

A brief update from Chuck Marohn and (by request) a replay of Chuck's recent appearance on the Tales from the Crypt podcast with Marty Bent. Many thanks to Marty for allowing the rebroadcast. Sign up for the latest free Strong Towns web broadcast , and invite a friend to do likewise.

There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen. Suddenly, the fragility that Strong Towns has long talked about is front and center to our national conversation. What is a Strong Towns advocate to do? We're starting that conversation today as the Strong Towns movement shifts into a new mode of operations to fit the times we find ourselves in.

There are many emotions associated with the creation of a new building in our neighborhood. They can be symbols of our best hopes...or our worst fears. Many of us have strong feelings about the kinds of buildings we want in our cities and towns, but, unless we are developers ourselves, chances are good we don’t have a holistic understanding of all the disciplines involved in creating that new buil...

We’re undergoing a massive demographic shift in the United States, says Danielle Arigoni , director of AARP’s Livable Communities initiative . By 2034, for the first time in our country’s history, there will be more people over the age of 65 than under 18. These changes make it not only important but urgent to build towns and cities that are strong for people of all ages and abilities. The Livable...

What comprises a legacy? Is it your one big win (or big loss)? Probably not. No matter what domain of life we’re talking about—the built environment, our city finances, or our family and community—chances are good that our legacy will be (in the words of today’s podcast guest) the accumulation of many little decisions. The big question is whether the legacy we leave will be one we intended to leav...

The affordable housing crisis is affecting not just people in coastal cities like Boston, New York, San Francisco, L.A., Seattle, and Portland. The crisis is spreading geographically and rippling throughout the economy. In the midst of such a crisis, it’s natural to want to assign blame; it’s also natural to look for a silver bullet solution. But is that even possible with a phenomenon as massive...

The rise of Donald Trump in the 2016 primaries—and his eventual win in the general—defied expectations and confounded explanations. Nearly every national poll was wrong, and political observers have spent the last four years trying to understand what happened (and how so many of the experts missed it). In his book Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse , Timothy Carney mak...

All too often, the national narrative portrays Louisiana as a backwater state. But we here at Strong Towns see things very differently . For example, we think Shreveport, Louisiana doesn’t get the credit it deserves for changing the local conversation around what will make the city stronger. We’ll go even further and say that Shreveport has one of the leading downtowns in the country—though too fe...

From the Strong Towns Gathering in Santa Ana, California, is a discussion about whether the state of California should bring back local redevelopment agencies. Mike Madrid and Steven Greenhut join Chuck Marohn to debate the matter.

A brief update from Chuck Marohn followed by an extended Q&A rebroadcast from an appearance on the Go Cultivate podcast by Verdunity .

By coincidence, on October 1, the very day Wiley released the new Strong Towns book , Wiley also published the new book by Quint Studer. It was coincidental for two reasons: Because Studer —in addition to being a businessman, entrepreneur, bestselling author, and leadership expert—is also a Strong Towns member , a past contributor to this site , and a passionate community leader working tirelessly...

If you want to get an idea of where the professions that shape our built environment—professions like urban planning, civil engineering, public policy, architecture, and so forth—are going, you could do a lot worse than to talk with current students in those fields. So we did. Strong Towns Senior Editor Daniel Herriges (a recent policy-school grad himself, with a 2017 Master of Urban and Regional...

There is a moment in the history of Strong Towns that has become legend both inside and outside of the organization. For those of you that haven’t heard about it before, it was the most important pivot point in the direction of the movement. Andrew Burleson—our Board Chair then and now—was standing up staring at a collection of Post-it notes on the wall. He had just walked us through an exercise t...