The Strong Towns Podcast
Strong Towns
300 episodes
The Strong Towns Podcast is a weekly conversation on the Strong Towns movement, hosted by Strong Towns Founder and President Charles Marohn and frequently featuring special guests. The podcast explores how we can financially strengthen our cities, towns, and neighborhoods and, in the process, make them better places to live. Join Chuck in examining how everything from urban design to economics to systems theory to psychology helps inform this core question.
Episodes page 5 of 6
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Jason Slaughter: The Goal Isn't to Build a Cycling City
Jason Slaughter is the creator of Not Just Bikes, a fast-growing YouTube channel about urban planning and urban life. Based in Amsterdam, he often makes videos about why city living in The Netherlands is so…
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Listen to the Briefing About the Strong Towns Lawsuit
Last week, we announced that Strong Towns has filed a lawsuit against the Minnesota Board of Engineering Licensure in federal district court. For more information about the case, its background, and anything that we're…
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Strong Towns Has Filed a Lawsuit Against the Minnesota Board of Engineering Licensure in Federal District Court
A small group of professional engineers are using the licensing process to stifle calls for reform and retaliate against Strong Towns for its advocacy. The Strong Towns organization advocates for reforming the way we…
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Ann Sussman and Justin Hollander: Architecture and the Unconscious Mind
How much conscious thought goes into our reactions to a place? It might be less than you think. The more we come to understand the human brain, the more we see how much the unconscious mind, and our need to socialize…
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Alex Alsup: Keeping People in Their Homes in Detroit
When it comes to housing, Detroit's struggles could be seen as a portent of things to come for other parts of America. Over the past fifteen years, one in three properties in the city have entered into tax foreclosure…
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Dr. Samuel Hughes: A Proposal for Strong Suburbs
Here at Strong Towns we often talk about cities and towns in North America, but what about our friends across the pond? While cities in the UK may not be facing exactly the same kind of infrastructure crisis as ours,…
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Michael Odiari: Putting a Check on Deadly Traffic Stops
Please note: This episode of The Strong Towns Podcast was recorded and scheduled for publication last week, prior to the recent shooting of Duante Wright. “Have you ever had a stare at death?” Michael Odiari has. So…
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Strongest Town Webcast: Lockport, IL vs. Oxford, MS (Audio Version)
Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn has a conversation with representatives from our two Strongest Town finalists: Mayor Steve Streit of Lockport, and Mayor Robyn Tannehill of Oxford. To vote in the matchup, go here:…
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Eric Jacobsen: How Car Culture is Making Us Lonelier
“Choosing screens over people.” It’s a phrase we hear often these days in relation to smartphones and other digital devices. But, as Eric O. Jacobsen describes in his new book, Three Pieces of Glass: Why We Feel Lonely…
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Beth Osborne: America's Roads are "Dangerous by Design"
The numbers are staggering, saddening, maddening. From 2010-2019, 53,435 people were killed by drivers while walking. That’s up 45% from the previous decade. In 2019, the last year for which we have complete data,…
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Grace Olmstead: The Legacy—and the Future—of the Places We Leave Behind
Grace Olmstead grew up in a tiny Idaho farming community her family has called home for generations. But, as so many young people do, Olmstead decided to leave her rural town. She attended college on the other side of…
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Cullum Clark: Creating Cities of Opportunity
A growing body of research—including research by Raj Chetty’s Equality of Opportunity Project (now called Opportunity Insights)—is making it plain: where a person lives has a huge influence on their ability to build…
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Rep. Jake Auchincloss & Rep. Mike Gallagher: How Congress Can Support Local Leaders and Get the Economy Going (Video)
Strong Towns advocates believe the way to grow stronger and more financially resilient towns and cities—and, by extension, a stronger, more resilient country—is from the bottom up. A bottom-up approach is one that…
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Joseph Kane: Prioritizing People (Not Projects) In Infrastructure Spending
As leaders in Washington, DC look to stimulate the American economy, one course of action with bipartisan support—as per usual—is to pour money into infrastructure. Yet as Strong Towns readers know, infrastructure…
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Dig Deep: What Does Democracy Look Like Now?
Since January 2017, at least once a month (and often more frequently than that), Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn has co-hosted a radio show on 91.7 KAXE, Northern Community Radio, along with his friend Aaron…
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Richard Florida: Remote Work and "The Rise of the Rest"
The ongoing pandemic has raised big questions about the future of North American cities. For example, we’ve heard for almost a year now that COVID-19 will be the end of cities and the triumph of the suburbs. After all,…
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Bad Bets
In last week’s episode of the Strong Towns podcast, Chuck Marohn, the founder and president of Strong Towns, talked with the economist Alison Schrager about uncertainty and risk. In this week’s episode, Chuck provides…
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Allison Schrager: "The only insurance against uncertainty is resilience."
Is there a meaningful difference between risk and uncertainty? On the face of it, we might not think so; in casual usage, we could employ the words interchangeably. But some economists see an important distinction…
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Gabrielle Gurley: For Transit, "The Cuts are Coming"
Most American transit systems were fragile before the pandemic—struggling for revenue, dependent for survival on federal money, inadequate fares, debt, and, in some cases, donations from local businesses. The pandemic…
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Matthew Yglesias: The Case for One Billion Americans (Part 2)
Last week’s episode of the Strong Towns podcast featured the first half of the conversation between Chuck Marohn, founder and president of Strong Towns, and Matt Yglesias, the bestselling author of One Billion…
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Matthew Yglesias: The Case for One Billion Americans (Part 1)
Does the United States have too few people? It’s a provocative question—but one perhaps not asked often enough. And journalist Matthew Yglesias has an even more provocative answer. In his new bestselling book, One…
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John Pattison: From Slow Food to Slow Church
In 1986, the Italian journalist Carlo Petrini organized a protest of the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant near the Spanish Steps in Rome. Holding bowls of penne pasta, the protestors chanted, “We don’t want fast…
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Chris Bernardo: Filling the Gaps to Support Local Businesses
It happens all the time: there are certain things entrepreneurs and commercial property owners know they need in their business district to really thrive—a relentless approach to maintenance, a high level of…
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Just Print the Money
Back in August, New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) warned of a “doomsday” scenario—including fare hikes and service cuts—if the federal government didn’t come through with $12 billion in aid. Writing…
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Stacy Mitchell: Fighting for Small Businesses and Strong Local Economies
COVID-19 has been brutal for small businesses. Back in September, data from Yelp showed that nearly 100,000 businesses had closed for good. That was two-and-a-half months ago...and many experts believe the next few…
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A Time for Local Action
Our members volunteer more. They vote more. They get involved more. In a world of political polarization and paralyzed governance, they are the credible advocates out there getting things done. I love these people. All…
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Blake Pagenkopf: Rebooting Our Political Operating System
In many PCs, the first software to run after hitting the power button is called BIOS (Basic Input-Output System). BIOS loads the computer’s operating system and the individual settings that make your personal computer…
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Denise Hearn: The Myth of Capitalism
Every year, Strong Towns founder Chuck Marohn releases a list of the best books he read that year. Past lists have included books that shaped the Strong Towns conversation in profound ways: Chris Arnade’s Dignity…
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Ben Hunt: We're Not Going to Fix This from the Top Down
What do we call a society that—from Wall Street to Main Street, from Washington, D.C. to your local city council chambers—seems to have been uprooted from facts and time-tested fundamentals, and is being driven instead…
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Bonus Episode: The Bottom-Up Revolution
Here’s a taste of our newest podcast, The Bottom-Up Revolution, hosted by Rachel Quednau. In this episode, you’ll hear from Alexander Hagler, an entrepreneur and urban gardener based in Milwaukee, WI who founded a…
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What Are We Waiting For?
What is keeping us from doing the things we need to do right now? Why do we outsource the response to urgent problems to the federal government and other distant entities—responses that may never come, or may come with…
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Help Shape the Future of the Strong Towns Podcasts
We'd be deeply grateful for your feedback on this podcast—what sort of episodes you like best, how you access the show, etc. Fill out our survey at strongtowns.org/survey and you can be entered in a drawing to win a…
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KAXE's Dig Deep on George Floyd, Coronavirus, and More
Two Minnesotans -- Aaron Brown and Chuck Marohn -- are regular commentators on KAXE community radio out of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and have regular conversations where they dig deep into the issues of the day. The Dig…
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Strip Mall
What a new strip mall reveals about the massive disconnect between what's "good" for the macro-economy and what's actually good for a local community. Reminder: The subscription bundle for the Strong Towns Academy is…
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A Good Life in a Prosperous Place
On the final day of the member drive, Chuck discusses what success means for the Strong Towns movement. Sign up to become a member at strongtowns.org/membership.
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Smart Cities: "Are we creating solutions looking for problems?"
In this special crossover edition of the Upzoned podcast, we're looking at the "smart cities" movement in general...and the ill-fated Toronto waterfront project in particular. ... A controversial project in Toronto…
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What do you do?
How do you actually implement a Strong Towns approach? The latest ebook from Strong Towns is The Local Leader's Toolkit: A Strong Towns Response to the Pandemic, a free guide for local leaders looking for a recovery…
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Better Bike Infrastructure, Better Budgets
In this special crossover edition of our It's the Little Things podcast, Strong Towns community builder Jacob Moses talks with Karl Fundenberger about his ten years of bike advocacy in Topeka. As a bike advocate in…
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You're Not Alone
The global pandemic is laying bare all the fragility that has built up over decades within our society. These are scary times filled with uncertainty. It’s unclear what next month will bring, let alone next year.…
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James Howard Kunstler: Living in the Long Emergency
If you’re like us, there are a few trusted guides you’ve looked to for help making sense of a world turned suddenly upside down. One of our guides has been James Howard Kunstler. The author of essential books like The…
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This Is What Happens When Markets Are Too Efficient
A couple weeks ago, the price of oil dipped below zero (negative $37.63, to be exact). This was unprecedented. Decreased demand due to COVID-19, the Russia-Saudi Arabia oil war, and near-full storage capacity—together,…
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Chris Gibbons: This Is How You Grow a Local Economy
Almost exactly one year ago, we chose Chuck Marohn’s 2013 interview with Chris Gibbons as one of the Strong Towns podcast’s eleven “greatest hits.” Why this episode from among several hundred choices? Not only because…
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Updating Loose Ends
A brief update from Chuck Marohn on the Strong Towns Academy and the absence of new podcasts on the feed. There is a lot happening in the world and at Strong Towns. We hope you are all safe and healthy.
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Americans may not wear face masks, even with survival at stake. Here's why.
Why is change so hard? In part, change is hard because our culture—our society, and our sense of our place in it—often prevents us from seriously considering options beyond the status quo. Every country and every…
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Strongest Town Semifinals: Beloit, WI
Shauna El-Amin talks about the "build your own" philosophy that has helped Beloit grow its downtown one entrepreneur at a time, the coordinated effort to rehab once-blighted properties into homes and businesses people…
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Strongest Town Semifinals: Hamilton, MO
Christa Horne and Bob Hughes talk about finding the balance between attracting tourists (100,000 visit each year) and nurturing local industry, Hamilton's success in growing homegrown businesses, and a simple idea…
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Strongest Town Semifinals: Watertown, SD
Sarah Caron and Michael Heuer talk about zoning changes that helped create housing options for people of all ages and abilities in Watertown, how switching to two-way streets (and ending parking minimums) boosted the…
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Strongest Town Semifinals: Winona, MN
Luke Sims on why re-legalizing mixed-use neighborhoods in Winona has led to the kind of organic development that makes people happy, Winona's success in helping people start and grow businesses, and on lowering the…
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Tales from the Crypt, +Update
A brief update from Chuck Marohn and (by request) a replay of Chuck's recent appearance on the Tales from the Crypt podcast with Marty Bent. Many thanks to Marty for allowing the rebroadcast. Sign up for the latest…
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Do What You Can, a Coronavirus Update
There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen. Suddenly, the fragility that Strong Towns has long talked about is front and center to our national conversation. What is a Strong Towns…
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