Jane Jacobs identified four key ingredients for good urban settings: compact development, varied buildings, mixed uses and short blocks. Here's why these ingredients are important and how certain regions in the U.S. might face more difficulty in implementing them than others.
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The traffic engineering profession has three responses to fatal crashes: blame the driver, call for more engineering or conclude it was an accident that couldn't be prevented. These are understandable human reactions. Here's why they're also inadequate and what should be done instead.
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North America's built environment makes it too dangerous for most children to walk to school. Edward Erfurt, Strong Towns' director of community action, knows that from experience. Here's how he's planning to make the street outside his son's school safer.
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Greenfield development may be appealing to people who are fighting the housing crisis, especially on cheap rural land. But if these developments are the only places with housing affordability, people who can't drive — whether due to age, disability, or finance — are out of luck. That's not a real solution.
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If you could ask anything from a downtown redevelopment project, what would it be? For a lot of people, it’s a place to sit. This may be surprising to some, but public seating plays an important role in creating prosperous communities. Here are a few of the reasons why.
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In this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck takes a look at a recent fatal car crash that took place in Ontario, and the response from local law enforcement on Twitter/X.
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In many cities, officials primarily rely on traffic enforcement to prevent car crashes and fatalities. This is unsustainable and ineffective. If city officials want to make Vision Zero a reality, instead of a slogan, they must address the systemic issues that put everyone at risk.
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Erik Lowe is the founder of Reimagine Spokane, a grassroots group calling for safer streets and better transit, and the designer of the “Spokane Reimagined” plan, a $1 billion proposal to improve safety and connectivity in Spokane, Washington, over 20 years.
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Street trees are more than just beautiful additions to cities and towns — they also provide many economic and practical benefits, from prolonging the life of road surfaces to lowering energy bills. Here’s why you should invest in some trees.
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People’s conversations about development, housing and transportation are often clouded by the words they use. So, here are some commonly used words and terms that advocates should avoid and what you can use instead.
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Designing streets to encourage safe behavior is a powerful tool for creating lasting prosperity. But when cars are designed to encourage unsafe behavior, it threatens to undo that progress.
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Philadelphia's Porchfest festival showcases the vibrant community spirit of West Philly, and residents proved the endurance of that spirit last month. After the city refused to close streets to car traffic, residents did so themselves to keep festival attendees safe. Admirable, but it should never have been necessary.
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Safety practices and education are vital for children, but when that education is focused solely on personal responsibility and is enforced through shame, it can do more harm than good. Personal responsibility can only go so far: For streets to truly be safe, changes to the transportation system itself are needed.
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When residents ask why they should allow more housing in their neighborhood, advocates often default to altruism, suggesting that an influx of people will have negative effects but that giving them a place to live is still the right thing to do. But there are a myriad of ways that an increased population can improve your quality of life. Here are some of them.
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Working with your local engineers and transportation officials can be challenging. How do you collaborate with people who are often responsible for the bad infrastructure in your place? One successful group focuses on bringing positivity and concrete suggestions to the conversation.
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North American road infrastructure signals to drivers that there shouldn’t be nondrivers in an area, so they fail to see the people who are actually there. This increases the risk of collisions and prevents reform. If cities are to have safer streets, they need to start seeing the people who use them.
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Local government is supposed to be the highest form of collaboration, but it doesn’t always feel that way. Too often, city rules favor opponents of change, meaning one dissenting voice can doom a project. However, Jersey City demonstrates how cities can increase collaboration by adopting an iterative approach to city planning.
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Other cities can learn a lot about placemaking from Cincinnati. It's a great example of what to do…and what not to do. Here are some observations from 36 hours spent in the city.
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Nice, California, doesn’t have nice streets. But it could, if city planners started thinking about road infrastructure in a way that prioritizes safety and walkability over asphalt. Here are a couple of redesign options, inspired by a Crash Analysis Studio held in the city.
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From a dangerous transportation system to a development pattern that siphons wealth instead of building it, people who are trying to build stronger towns face many daunting challenges. The good news is that they’re rising to the occasion. Here are a few examples of how people really can change the world one block, neighborhood or city at a time.
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