The most brilliant innovations in building cities are already embodied in the traditional development pattern, a foolproof approach to creating resilient and productive places that was developed the hard way.
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South Florida is known for its luxurious lifestyle and extravagant beachfront homes. These mansions must reel in big bucks for the city, right? Let’s see how productive they really are when we #DoTheMath.
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How much road does your city have—and how much does it actually have the money to maintain? We compare “calories in” to “calories out” before we binge on ice cream; what if we took the same approach to our infrastructure budgets? One city did, and here’s what they found out.
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Leander, Texas, a suburb of Austin, is a quiet bedroom community that recently found itself with a commuter rail station. Can it afford to waste the opportunity to create the transit-oriented downtown it never had?
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When we do the math, we find that preserving historic buildings and districts is the best thing we can do for our cities’ economic futures. Utica, New York should consider this when choosing where to locate a new hospital campus.
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America has an excessive infrastructure problem—and perhaps nowhere is that more clear than in places like the massive, center-less city of Palm Bay, Florida.
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While new transportation funding is needed, more money without significant reform is worse than no funding at all. We need to continue to oppose all of these funding efforts until serious reform is on the table.
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What would it actually cost to put a roof over the head of every person experiencing chronic homelessness? Some number crunching suggests not as much as you think, and an amount we could afford—especially given what it already costs not to.
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Your daily commute sucks. Is it also making you go broke?
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When we obsess over the speed of travel—whether in our cars or on public transit—we’re missing the point of transportation. It’s not about how far you can get in a given time: it’s what you can get to.
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Big box developments are not paying their fair share.
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What happens when you fill your city with parking? Lots and lots of low value land, and not much else.
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If we can align the incentives of the players involved, we can build infrastructure that is actually necessary and while doing it quicker and at lower prices than we do now.
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We can make low risk, high returning investments in our cities while improving the quality of life for people, particularly those who are not benefiting from the current approach.
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Problems have solutions. Predicaments have outcomes. We're in a predicament.
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This story is not unique: a mid-sized Minnesota town is preparing to adopt a 50-year-old neighborhood. As the neighborhood struggles to pay for long-term maintenance on its roads and pipes, it seems like neither annexation nor autonomy will really solve the problem.
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Regardless of what my city does -- hold taxes steady or increase them by 50% -- next year's budget will be a transaction of decline, an attempt to hold on, just a little while longer, to what we perceive that we have. We have to do better if we want a country full of Strong Towns.
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I’m going to aggressively oppose any increase in transportation funding in Minnesota, any other state or at the federal level, until there is aggressive reform of this system. At this point, communal funds must be for maintenance only with any system expansion being paid by some form of user charge. #nonewroads
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The underpinnings of the current financial crisis lie in a living arrangement—the American pattern of development—that does not financially support itself.
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If you want a simple explanation for why our economy is stalled and cannot be restarted, it is this: Our places do not create wealth, they destroy wealth.
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