Podcasts · Government

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 6 of 6

  1. Ben Stevens: Every Building Is a Startup

    · 52 min · Episode 470

    There are many emotions associated with the creation of a new building in our neighborhood. They can be symbols of our best hopes...or our worst fears. Many of us have strong feelings about the kinds of buildings we…

  2. Danielle Arigoni: Making Great Places for People of all Ages

    · 20 min · Episode 469

    We’re undergoing a massive demographic shift in the United States, says Danielle Arigoni, director of AARP’s Livable Communities initiative. By 2034, for the first time in our country’s history, there will be more…

  3. David McAlvany: Legacy is an Accumulation of Little Decisions

    · 45 min · Episode 468

    What comprises a legacy? Is it your one big win (or big loss)? Probably not. No matter what domain of life we’re talking about—the built environment, our city finances, or our family and community—chances are good that…

  4. Jenny Schuetz: Who's To Blame for High Housing Costs?

    · 48 min · Episode 467

    The affordable housing crisis is affecting not just people in coastal cities like Boston, New York, San Francisco, L.A., Seattle, and Portland. The crisis is spreading geographically and rippling throughout the…

  5. Tim Carney: "Alienated America" and the Rise of Populism

    · 54 min · Episode 466

    The rise of Donald Trump in the 2016 primaries—and his eventual win in the general—defied expectations and confounded explanations. Nearly every national poll was wrong, and political observers have spent the last four…

  6. Liz Swaine: Bootstrapping Downtown Shreveport

    · 59 min · Episode 465

    All too often, the national narrative portrays Louisiana as a backwater state. But we here at Strong Towns see things very differently. For example, we think Shreveport, Louisiana doesn’t get the credit it deserves for…

  7. Should California Bring Back Redevelopment Agencies?

    · 1 h 02 min · Episode 464

    From the Strong Towns Gathering in Santa Ana, California, is a discussion about whether the state of California should bring back local redevelopment agencies. Mike Madrid and Steven Greenhut join Chuck Marohn to…

  8. Go Cultivate with Verdunity

    · 1 h 18 min · Episode 463

    A brief update from Chuck Marohn followed by an extended Q&A rebroadcast from an appearance on the Go Cultivate podcast by Verdunity.

  9. If the “Strong Towns” book is the WHY, this book is the HOW.

    · 57 min · Episode 462

    By coincidence, on October 1, the very day Wiley released the new Strong Towns book, Wiley also published the new book by Quint Studer. It was coincidental for two reasons: • Because Studer—in addition to being a…

  10. Students and the Strong Towns Movement

    · 28 min · Episode 461

    If you want to get an idea of where the professions that shape our built environment—professions like urban planning, civil engineering, public policy, architecture, and so forth—are going, you could do a lot worse…

  11. Aligning Mission with Funding, the Strong Towns Way

    · 21 min · Episode 460

    There is a moment in the history of Strong Towns that has become legend both inside and outside of the organization. For those of you that haven’t heard about it before, it was the most important pivot point in the…

  12. What does it mean to be part of a bottom-up revolution?

    · 15 min · Episode 459

    Last month, Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity was published. Since then, I’ve been touring North America to promote the Strong Towns movement and share our ideas with audiences big and…

  13. Live in Kansas City: "We’re a suburban community learning we can be urban."

    · 1 h 01 min · Episode 458

    It’s hard not to be encouraged by what’s happening in Kansas City. On both the Kansas and Missouri sides, there are indications that the conversation is shifting. The assumptions about development that led Kansas City…

  14. Gracy Olmstead: It Still Takes a Village

    · 44 min · Episode 457

    As writer Gracy Olmstead was commuting to work in Washington, D.C. from her home in the suburbs, she often thought back to her childhood, being raised in the same rural Idaho town in which her great-great-great…

  15. King Williams: The Gentrifiers Will Become the Gentrified

    · 47 min · Episode 456

    Gentrification. As we’ve written elsewhere, the term often sheds more heat than light. This is due not only to its negative connotations and lack of precise meaning, but also because gentrification plays out…

  16. Paul Stewart: You Are the Help You've Been Waiting For

    · 1 h 00 min · Episode 455

    "No one's coming to save my city for me, so what is it that I can do?" -- Paul Stewart, Oswego Renaissance Association There is more than one kind of housing crisis. The crisis we hear the most about is the crisis of…

  17. More than Math: Living with Intention in Our Stronger Towns

    · 38 min · Episode 454

    Rachel Quednau returns for this very special episode of the podcast, the finale of our weeklong series inspired by Chuck Marohn’s new book, Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity. After…

  18. Minimum Viable Development? How We Let the "Perfect" Be the Enemy of the Good

    · 1 h 16 min · Episode 453

    In episode four of this weeklong podcast series, Chuck Marohn talks with Andrew Burleson — software engineer, Strong Towns board chair, and frequent podcast guest — about the difference between a problem and a…

  19. Building Productive Places (and Showering them with Love)

    · 1 h 02 min · Episode 452

    This is a special mash-up edition of the It’s the Little Things podcast and Strong Towns podcast! In this episode, Jacob Moses, host of It’s the Little Things, and Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn discuss a couple…

  20. Breaking Free of the Infrastructure Cult

    · 1 h 15 min · Episode 451

    In episode two of this weeklong podcast series, Charles Marohn, Jr. is interviewed by Strong Towns board member John Reuter. The two longtime friends go in-depth on Chuck’s book, Strong Towns, which releases today!…

  21. Spooky Wisdom: What Lessons Should We Be Learning from How Our Ancestors Built Cities?

    · 51 min · Episode 450

    Welcome to a special mash-up episode of the Strong Towns and Upzoned podcasts! In this episode, Kea Wilson, host of Upzoned, and Strong Towns president Charles Marohn, Jr. discuss the “spooky wisdom” contained in the…

  22. James Howard Kunstler: It's All Going to Have to Get Smaller

    · 57 min · Episode 449

    There is a prevailing fallacy, despite warning signs to the contrary (looming peak oil, fragile markets, and climate weirdness, among others), that we can continue in perpetuity the lifestyle to which we’ve become…

  23. Tomas Sedlacek: A More Humane Economics

    · 1 h 09 min · Episode 448

    "Growth is good. Like a sunny day. But having an economy that assumes all sunny days is a recipe for disaster." This is one of the central insights from this week's podcast, featuring our very special guest, Tomas…

  24. Patrick Deneen on Rediscovering Community and Rootedness

    · 49 min · Episode 447

    “The freer we are, the less we feel we control the mechanisms of our liberty and individuality.” — Patrick Deneen It’s no secret to our regular readers that Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn is an avid…

  25. Ben Westhoff: Ferguson, Five Years Later

    · 42 min · Episode 446

    On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown was fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, a northwestern suburb of St. Louis. Brown’s death, and the protests that followed, helped catalyze the Black Lives…

  26. Ask Strong Towns #10: August 2019

    · 57 min · Episode 445

    At Strong Towns, our mission is to spread our radically new approach to growth and development to as many people as possible. That's why we aren't available to consult with individuals or organizations—but that doesn't…

  27. Steve Mouzon: Living Traditions and the Original Green

    · 52 min · Episode 444

    “Green” is all around you these days, and increasingly it’s a buzzword when it comes to our built environment. LEED-certified construction, high-tech permeable pavement, electric vehicles: there’s no shortage of…

  28. The Dignity of Local Community: Chris Arnade

    · 1 h 02 min · Episode 443

    In 2017, writer, photographer, and reformed-Wall-Streeter-turned-social-critic Chris Arnade appeared as a guest on the Strong Towns Podcast, in an episode that has been one of our most popular and was featured in our…

  29. What Happens When Housing Becomes a Cash Crop?

    · 57 min · Episode 442

    Giorgio Angelini didn’t exactly pick the most fortuitous time to start architecture school. He enrolled in Rice University’s architecture program in 2008, just as the U.S. economy was plunging into recession and new…

  30. Building Cities For Our Unconscious Brains: Ann Sussman on the Failings of Modern Architecture

    · 53 min · Episode 441

    If the 19th century belonged to engineering, and the 20th century to chemistry and physics, then the 21st might belong to biology. (The OECD said as much in a 2012 forum.) Increasingly, we’re coming to understand the…

  31. Start Small, and Make a Lot of Noise: John Yung on Suburban Revitalization

    · 58 min · Episode 440

    The growth of American suburbia began with a bang, not a whimper. In the 1950s and 1960s, we built new residential subdivisions and commercial strips on the fringes of every major U.S. city—and we built them fast.…

  32. Ask Strong Towns #9 (June 2019)

    · 1 h 02 min · Episode 439

    At Strong Towns, our mission is to spread our radically new approach to growth and development to as many people as possible. That's why we aren't available to consult with individuals or organizations—but that doesn't…

  33. What Does it Take to Bring a City Back from the Brink?

    · 1 h 00 min · Episode 438

    What does it really take to bring a depopulating city back from the brink? Scott Ford has some ideas. In early 2011, still near the bottom of the Great Recession, Newsweek published a listicle of America’s Top 10…

  34. Autonomous Vehicles Are Coming. Do We Have a Say in Who Benefits?

    · 1 h 05 min · Episode 437

    The hype about autonomous vehicles—”AV’s” for short—is often breathless. Advocates have touted the emerging technology as the key to everything that ails our cities—heck, they just might bring about Mideast peace and…

  35. Ask Strong Towns: Celebrity Edition with Community-Conscious Developer Derek Avery

    · 1 h 07 min · Episode 436

    Derek Avery is a community-conscious real-estate developer from Dallas, TX, whose work is rooted in the mantra of “revitalization without gentrification.” His company, COIR Holdings, takes a holistic approach to the…

  36. Why does Strong Towns put *so* much emphasis on its members—and why is that so unusual in the nonprofit world?

    · 20 min · Episode 435

    On this special episode of Upzoned, Kea sits down with board member John Reuter to talk about the big story in the ST universe—the Strong Towns member drive—and why Strong Towns members are so much more crucial to our…

  37. It's the Strong Towns Moment

    · 14 min · Episode 434

    There is always a moment standing off stage, before the lights come up and the show begins, when the calmness of anticipation sets in. All the work to prepare has been done—the stage is set, the lines are rehearsed,…

  38. Steve Nygren of Serenbe: "I Wanted to Build a Town, Not a Development"

    · 51 min · Episode 433

    Steve Nygren is two decades into his post-career career as the "mad genius" master developer of a town-in-progress called Serenbe, Georgia. It's a community deliberately modeled after English country villages and other…

  39. Land Value Tax with Joe Minicozzi

    · 29 min · Episode 432

    As an engineer, I worked for cities doing public improvement projects; building and maintaining streets, sewer pipes, water mains, and drainage systems. One project opened my eyes to a crazy world of perverse…

  40. Memphis’s U-Turn: Interview with Doug McGowen

    · 50 min · Episode 431

    The strongest and most resilient communities, just as with people, are often those that have endured unusual hardship and come out stronger for it. There’s a clarity of focus and purpose that you develop because you…

  41. Ask Strong Towns #8: April 2019

    · 52 min · Episode 430

    Here's the audio from our April 2019 edition of Ask Strong Towns, a bimonthly webcast in which you can ask anything you want of our founder and president, Chuck Marohn, and our communications director, Kea Wilson.…

  42. What to Expect From Strong Towns: the Book

    · 49 min · Episode 429

    The wait is over. Chuck Marohn, Strong Towns’s founder and president, is back with an all-new episode of the Strong Towns Podcast! Thank you to all our listeners who were patient with us during our several-month…

  43. Greatest Hits #11: Economic Gardening With Chris Gibbons (2013)

    · 47 min · Episode 428

    If you’re looking for an example of the Strong Towns mindset applied to local economic development, you couldn’t do much better than Economic Gardening. It’s an approach to growing a city’s job base and economic…

  44. Strongest Town Contest: Championship Round

    · 37 min · Episode 427

    Here's the audio from the championship round of our Strongest Town Contest. We invited representatives of our final two contestants—Quint Studer of Pensacola, FL, and Nancy Pearson of Portsmouth, NH—to join us for a…

  45. Strongest Town Semifinals: Portsmouth, New Hampshire

    · 25 min · Episode 426

    Nancy Pearson shares her vision for downtown and the steps the city is taking to get there, how Portsmouth capitalizes on its port, and answers a question from a Strong Towns member about how Portsmouth prepares for…

  46. Strongest Town Semifinals: Guthrie, Oklahoma

    · 20 min · Episode 425

    Justin Fortney shares plans for a traffic calming project to better connect neighborhoods to Guthrie’s downtown, how the city engages its residents, and answers a question from a Strong Towns member about how Guthrie…

  47. Strongest Town Semifinals: Pensacola, Florida

    · 21 min · Episode 424

    Quint Studer discusses the current projects Pensacola is working on to make the best use of its existing infrastructure, how Pensacola encourages local business creation, and answers a question from a Strong Towns…

  48. Strongest Town Semifinals: Safety Harbor, Florida

    · 21 min · Episode 423

    James Fogarty discusses the current projects Safety Harbor is working on towards becoming more financially resilient, what steps the local leaders are taking to foster Safety Harbor's walkable downtown, and answers a…

  49. Greatest Hits #10: John Dominic Crossan (2013)

    · 1 h 10 min · Episode 422

    There are a lot of reasons that Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn is excited about finally writing a book that encapsulates the message of our organization and our growing movement. But one…

  50. Greatest Hits #9: Can You Be an Engineer and Speak Out for Reform? (2015)

    · 1 h 06 min · Episode 421

    A lot of professions and organizations have an unspoken code, one that says, “We may air our disagreements internally, but to the rest of the world, we present a united front.” The police and the military, for example,…

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