Any attempt to design cities that are for people and not cars is all for naught if there are no means to finance it.
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This new Strong Towns e-book explores what it would take to revive small-scale development as a force significant enough to shape and grow our cities.
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Real-world examples of the administrative friction that holds back small-scale developers.
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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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A how-to guide from Strong Towns.
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What can we learn about the housing market and corporations buying back their own stock...through anecdotal references? (As it turns out, quite a lot!)
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We need to go back to the point where we were still building architecture that inspired, lifted the human spirit, and lasted millennia—and build upon those practices.
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This week on the Strong Towns Podcast, we’ve invited back a popular past guest and regular Strong Towns contributor: Johnny Sanphillippo.
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Exploring the property market in Appleton, WI, reveals the ephemeral nature of the North American development pattern.
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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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Too often, “form follows parking” for small developers. A project feasibility starts with on-site parking minimums; only then can it be determined how much is left over for productive use.
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Small-scale developers are an important part of building strength and prosperity. If anything, that’s more true now than it was before COVID-19.
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It’s important to demystify the development process. Not just for people who have a vested interest in what gets built in their neighborhood, but for people involved in one aspect of the building process — city officials, finance, architects, planners, etc. — who may not fully appreciate what’s happening elsewhere.
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In Seattle, policy victories tend to be long-fought and hard-won. What will it take to achieve a city that can flex, evolve, and meet its residents’ needs in a more organic way, without every change becoming an arduous political battle?
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Incrementalism is not an end in itself. It’s not about stubborn insistence on some sort of small-is-beautiful aesthetic for its own sake. Incremental development is a practical means to the end of resilient, financially sound places.
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Trying to navigate opaque bureaucracies, just to get permission to build something that used to be legal everywhere, is like eating Jell-O with chopsticks: tedious and unsatisfying. No wonder people find pragmatic work-arounds instead.
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