Here are some touchstone concepts that help underlie the Strong Towns view of how to achieve a world full of places capable of growing bottom-up prosperity
Read MoreHow do we minimize the chance that our best intentions will go awry and leave everybody worse off? Let’s set these 3 ground rules.
Read MoreConventional approaches to annexation — and even annexation reform — have failed to create stronger cities and towns. Here’s a modest proposal for a better way.
Read MoreWastewater engineers and the communities they serve may be suffering from the same delusion—that the good life will go on forever.
Read MoreEvery major historical event is accompanied by predictions that it will change everything forever. For the most part, it never does.
Read MoreOne of the key thought leaders who has inspired the Strong Towns movement has an admonition and a warning for the world—about how our institutions got so fragile in the face of a crisis like the present one.
Read MoreThe coronavirus is revealing how fragile our economy is. (Look no further than disruptions to the global supply chain.) As we rebuild, will we double down on the failed status quo…or build something ANTI-fragile?
Read MoreA retrenchment in the stock market will be devastating to our cities. It’s also inevitable and, in some ways, necessary.
Read MoreThere is no better way to discredit a campaign to reduce auto fatalities than to compare the risk of death by auto crash to the risk of death by viral pandemic.
Read MoreWe have to stop looking at the stagnation and decline of our blocks and neighborhoods as a normal part of the development process.
Read MoreEasy money and uncontentious budget meetings sound nice in theory. But private and public sectors beware: lack of stressors can make decision-makers undisciplined and obscure huge bills that are sure to come due.
Read MoreCities need to be exposed to low levels of stress and disorder in order to become more antifragile over time. Technocratic planning which seeks to make our world too predictable merely sets the stage for future crises.
Read MoreCities are complex, organic, emergent things—and we impose top-down order on them at our own peril.
Read MoreIf public officials are going to use debt to pay for things, they must be vigilant about their lack of real skin the game.
Read MoreWe must work to reduce the negative impacts on our cities and towns before we try the next trendy planning intervention to solve our problems.
Read MoreMost of our investments need to be riskless, but a small fraction need to be high risk, high reward.
Read MoreWhat is going on in the doughnut of despair surrounding downtown Detroit is not a policy choice. It is a consequence of policy choice. There is no bringing back the illusion of wealth or, to paraphrase Tomas Sedlacek, Detroit can not get back its unsustainability.
Read MoreCan we help cities become antifragile by changing the way they receive aid from the state?
Read MoreJane Jacobs was actually more about how to think than what to do.
Read MoreAn update on the Antifragile book club.
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