Hannah Rechtschaffen is the director of the Greenfield Business Association in Greenfield, Massachusetts. She joins Norm today to talk about how Greenfield is becoming a stronger town. (Transcript included.)
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Local officials often feel trapped, having to juggle large financial obligations with residents that resist tax increases. But delaying these tough decisions only makes them more painful and politically difficult. Bentonville, Arkansas, is experiencing that firsthand.
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Drawn-out approval processes attract resistance, allowing opponents to derail individual projects. Cities need a proactive approach that streamlines housing production while maintaining high standards. Memphis and Shelby County, Tennessee, is showing how to do that.
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How do you direct city finances in a truly effective way? What role should the public play in a city’s financial decisions? Chuck and city finance expert Rick Cole cover these questions and more in this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast. (Transcript included.)
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Marion, Ohio’s story is one of resilience and community. Devastated by economic disinvestment and the opioid epidemic, residents realized it was up to them to turn things around. Here's how they're doing it.
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Like most cities undergoing rapid growth, Bend is experiencing growing pains. Here’s how this small ski town is handling record numbers of growth in a fiscally responsible way.
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How do you provide the housing your community so desperately needs if you’re not wealthy enough to attract developers? If you’re Greenfield, Massachusetts, you start getting creative.
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Strong cities learn from their struggles and celebrate the progress they've already made. Here’s how Harrisonburg, Virginia, is embracing that ethos and making strides toward a stronger future.
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Cities across North America are financially imploding—not because of a lack of growth, but because of the pattern of growth itself. Few cities illustrate this pattern as vividly as Houston, Texas.
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Kip Santos is a trained civil engineer and construction manager who quit his job to build Local Conversations full-time. Now he splits his time between the U.S. and Canada, nurturing the groups he's founded and building missing middle housing. (Transcript included.)
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The ripple effects of outdated parking mandates are felt everywhere, making it harder to build the kind of communities people want and need. North Carolina might be about to change that.
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Officials in Ottowa, Canada, are showing that local governments don’t need to accept expensive and unproductive projects, even if they have a lot of momentum behind them.
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Attendees of last week’s National Housing Supply Summit hoped it would provide insights for how Washington can tackle America’s housing crisis. But expecting Washington to fix problems it helped create isn’t optimism; it’s a paradox.
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Cities thrive when residents actively participate in conversations about their future. Whether through public comment or the written word, speaking up isn’t just an act of protest—it’s an act of stewardship. Here’s how one Albuquerque resident advocated for more housing in his city.
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Recent publications from The New York Times and the Civitas Institute prove that years of work by the growing Strong Towns movement — by people like you — is successfully spreading a forward-thinking approach to building towns.
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Most of today’s property tax systems discourage productive use of land while rewarding neglect. Minnesota is considering a policy that would change that.
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Sean Hayford Oleary is a city council member in Richfield, Minnesota. Today, he and Norm discuss his efforts to reintroduce duplexes, reduce parking mandates, and support walkable neighborhoods. (Transcript included.)
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When cities fall into the Growth Ponzi Scheme, they prioritize rapid, short-term growth that strains city resources and reduces long-term prosperity. Residents of Bentonville, Arkansas, are feeling those effects firsthand.
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Chuck is joined by Shayne Kavanagh, senior manager of research for the Government Finance Officers Association. Kavanagh discusses the role of finance officers as “decision architects” and shares some tactics they can use to improve their processes. (Transcript included.)
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The Finance Decoder reveals the long-term trends hidden behind annual balanced budgets. For Kansas City, those trends are deeply problematic.
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