What will it take to get back the ecosystems of tradespeople, laborers, lenders, and small-scale developers who made incremental development possible in the past?
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Who is actually going to do the work of incremental development, and what will their motivations be?
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For most small-scale developers, capital is a significant barrier to doing small infill projects. But that isn't because the money isn't there to be had.
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A cohort of small developers representing over 100 properties in poor, disinvested neighborhoods are, together, the largest developer in South Bend, IN. Can their success be replicated?
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Incremental development today is far from the path of least resistance. To do it, you'll need the ability to navigate dozens of regulatory barriers.
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We need people who will build in the places where big, corporate developers won’t. But how do we get enough small-scale developers back to make a difference?
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We get a lot of questions over at the Action Lab, and today we’re going to answer some of them!
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Somehow, as a society, we’ve drifted from ordinary people being able to build their own homes on a cash basis in an interactive, iterative way, to immense, hyper-elaborate habitats.
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It’s no wonder that some people oppose new housing when the housing and infrastructure projects they see are disruptive construction work that drags on for years.
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What if we had a class of semi-amateur developers 10 or 100 times larger than it is today?
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There are only a couple reforms Strong Towns recommends unequivocally for every town and city. Sacramento just passed both of them…unanimously…in one evening.
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The classic story...with a Strong Towns twist.
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Centralized systems are good at getting us cheap food, cars, and toilet paper—until they’re not. They’re also really bad at isolating deadly outbreaks.
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The North American development pattern disrupted a way of building cities that has thousands of years of accumulated wisdom behind it—and is still at work in dynamic ways around the world.
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So you've heard that "developers" wield a lot of power in your city, or that certain actions will or won’t benefit them? It matters which ones you’re talking about.
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Decades into the Suburban Experiment, many towns and cities have precious few old buildings left. Those that remain could be adapted to new uses—but cities are making that hard.
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We all love those “Before” and “After” shots. But where things get interesting—whether it’s on a home makeover show, or building a strong town—is what comes in-between.
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Our cities need buildings that are “boring.” Here’s why.
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It’s tempting to think the challenges we face in the “unprecedented year” of 2020 require big, top-down, unprecedented solutions. But this may be exactly the right time for the “little way.”
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Portland, Oregon has joined the ranks of cities ending their apartment bans and allowing the next increment of residential development everywhere. Here’s a run-down of why they just might have passed the best such policy yet.
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