This Vancouver-Based Artist Is Writing Music…About Building Strong Towns!

We’ve seen a lot of fascinating takes on the Strong Towns approach, but this none quite like this musical take.

Podcast, Marohn, Top StoryStrong TownsMay 9, 2022strong towns approach, Economic Gardening, arts, localism, podcast

Accelerate Success in Your Place with Economic Gardening

Conventional economic development practice focuses on recruiting new businesses to relocate to the community. In reality, the most stable and prosperous businesses are those that are homegrown.

Chris Gibbons: This Is How You Grow a Local Economy

If your city isn’t pursuing this strategy to economic development, you’re missing out.

Marohn, Podcast, Top StoryStrong TownsApril 28, 2020Economic Gardening, podcast

How "Small and Smart" Ideas can Boost Your City's Creativity (and Financial Resiliency)

Greg Wright—Executive Director at CREATE Portage County—shares how you can foster creative (and financially resilient) communities where you live, including how to inspire creative residents, how to demonstrate the economic impact of creativity, and why you should root all initiatives in a “small and smart” way.

How Does Your (Economic) Garden Grow?

We conclude our podcast greatest-hits series by revisiting a 2013 conversation with Chris Gibbons, the originator of Economic Gardening. Helping home-grown companies expand—rather than importing jobs from elsewhere—Economic Gardening is the essence of a Strong Towns approach to economic development.

Podcast, Top StoryStrong TownsApril 15, 2019Economic Gardening

Would You Move to a New City for $10,000?

Tulsa, OK is the latest city to offer remote workers some tempting incentives if they’ll move there for only a year. Is this a smarter approach to economic development, or do our cities need to #dothemath?

Podcast, Marohn, Top StoryStrong TownsDecember 14, 2018Economic Gardening

"I Don't Give a (Bleep) About Akron!"

Akron, Ohio’s subsidies for redevelopment of the failed Rolling Acres mall are a textbook case of the sunk cost fallacy: the tendency to examine new opportunities not on their own merit, but in the context of past investments.

Marohn, Top StoryCharles MarohnAugust 13, 2018Economic Gardening, TIF, subsidies, orderly but dumb

A Beginner's Guide to Economic Gardening (Free Webcast)

The Edward Lowe Foundation is offering a free webcast, "A Beginner's Guide to Economic Gardening," next month, led by Chris Gibbons, founder of Economic Gardening

Strong TownsSeptember 7, 2017Economic Gardening

Foxconn Con

This proposal is political theater at best, and, at worst, it's treating jobs as an object of religious veneration.

Top Story, MarohnCharles MarohnJuly 28, 2017Economic Gardening, economics, growth, wisconsin, jobs

Cities as Platforms of Productivity

Cities are filled with talent, ideas, and hardworking people. We just need to provide them with the platform to be productive.

Top StoryAndrew PriceMarch 22, 2017Economic Gardening, local business, local economy, entrepreneurs

Better towns through stress

Here are 4 different types of stress that can help our cities become strong towns.

Import Replacement

Many people associate Jacobs with a love of walkable neighborhoods, urban parks and historic buildings. What they fail to grasp is that these are means to an end, not the end itself.