Humans are messy, complicated, and unpredictable: why doesn’t our street design account for that?
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How do we minimize the chance that our best intentions will go awry and leave everybody worse off? Let’s set these 3 ground rules.
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Cities are betting big on the Suburban Experiment, assuming the market or federal government will be able to bail them out. Those are bad bets and risky assumptions.
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Understanding risk and uncertainty—and the difference between the two—can help local communities face the unknown.
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It’s possible to grow and accumulate wealth…but not without intention. That starts with asking the right question. "How do we get more money for infrastructure?" is the wrong question.
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How do we move beyond Team Mask vs. Team Anti-Mask? Understanding the difference between individual and cumulative risk is a start. But it’s only a start.
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One 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.
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There 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.
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The most important thing for a local government is to avoid ruin.
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The most important thing for a local government is to avoid ruin.
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Here's how one strong citizen approaches the home buying process.
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Local governments have a moral duty to pursue growth and investment strategies that have no chance of blowing up.
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How does a city balance the expectations of drivers with the needs of productive places and the people who use them, when fast-paced technological change may soon upend the basic realities on which such assessments are built?
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We never calculate—let alone track—the public's actual return-on-investment (dollars in versus dollars out over multiple life cycles) when we do a project. We never even ask the question.
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Yes, many thriving places have attractive lawn furniture, tasteful signage, and abundant flowers. But adding those items to a place with fundamental flaws is just lipstick on a pig.
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Reintroducing some risk, or rather, making the risk that is already there more evident, may be the best thing we can do to help re-build a culture where small mistakes don’t have devastating consequences.
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Not only do small downtown shops provide a higher rate of tax revenue than big box stores; they're also a much lower risk investment for the community.
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Maybe we're doing it wrong.
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A diversity of transportation options has recognized and measurable value. If one link fails (a bridge collapse, a sinkhole, a major crash, etc.) and is closed, others can pick up the burden.
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A twisted look at the twisted federal transportation bill.
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