1
Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes
A top-down approach to addressing accidents fails to make streets safer. A local approach could change that.
Strong Towns
The way we build our cities and towns is fundamentally broken. Strong Towns helps people understand the why and take local action to make their places stronger.
- Popular posts
- 38
- Total points
- 10,127
- HN comments
- 10,005
- Rank
- #93 company
Visit strongtowns.org → On Hacker News Sep 2016 – Aug 2025
Society, Policy & Culture 38Tech Industry & Business 2History & Retro Computing 1Career & Management 1
2
Walkable Streets Are More Economically Productive
3 dollars and cents arguments that definitively prove the need for people-oriented, walk-friendly places.
3
Why Many Cities Have No Money
Problems have solutions. Predicaments have outcomes. We're in a predicament.
4
If we want a shift to walking, we need to prioritize dignity
Why does walking feel so intuitive when we’re in a city built before cars, yet as soon as we return home, walking feels like an unpleasant chore that immediately drives us into a car?
5
The Stroad
A stroad is a street/road hybrid. Stroads are dangerous and unproductive, and if we want to build strong towns, we have to eliminate them.
6
Our self imposed scarcity of nice places
Why is it that when a place is [pick one: walkable, bikeable, beautiful, lovable, inviting, human-scale], it so often gets coded as being “gentrified” or “upscale”?
7
Poor Neighborhoods Make the Best Investments
We can make low risk, high returning investments in our cities while improving the quality of life for people, particularly those who are not benefiting from the current approach.
8
Lessons learned from a failing local mall
The closing of the mall’s anchor store exposes how fragile the community’s business model is, providing an opening to shift approach.
9
Why Infrastructure Is So Expensive
If we can align the incentives of the players involved, we can build infrastructure that is actually necessary and while doing it quicker and at lower prices than we do now.
10
We need to do the math, even on “small” projects
It’s easy for “maintaining” our public investments to become “upgrading” our public investments. Especially when there is money available. And especially when that money is borrowed.
11
How do you fix a stroad?
We respond to a question posted for us on Reddit about a stroad that seems unfixable—and maybe that’s because it is.
12
The Rise of “Movie-Set Urbanism”
The drive-to version of a walkable main street, surrounded by parking lots, is like a Western movie set made of fake building facades: all hat and no cattle.
13
The Growth Ponzi Scheme
The American pattern of development creates the illusion of wealth. Today we are in the process of seeing that illusion destroyed…and with it the prosperity we have come to take for granted.
14
We've Built Cities We Can't Afford
Kansas City, Missouri, has a serious infrastructure problem. But an emerging conversation is charting a path toward greater strength and financial resilience.
15
College campuses are designed at human-scale – cities can be too
Many college campuses are designed to be walkable and human-scaled. But living in a neighborhood like that doesn’t have to end at graduation.
16
I'm retiring from the engineering profession
To protect our advocacy work against future harassment from the Minnesota licensing board, Strong Towns President Charles Marohn is retiring as a professional engineer.
17
But Rich People Live Here, So We Can't Be Going Broke
If your growth strategy only works as long as wealthy people live in your town, your growth strategy is deeply fragile.
18
We Regulate the Wrong Things
Most cities’ zoning and development regulations obsess over things that are easy to measure, like building height and density, at the expense of the things that actually determine whether we’re building quality places.
19
Recognizing the signs of disruption in our urban habitat
Commuter rail stations in the San Francisco Bay Area should be some of the most valuable land in the region (and by extension, the world). So why are there so many parking lots and one-story buildings right next to them?
20
America's Growth Ponzi Scheme
The American pattern of development creates the illusion of wealth. Today we are in the process of seeing that illusion destroyed…and with it the prosperity we have come to take for granted.
21
Why Does Infrastructure Cost So Much?
Why does infrastructure cost so much to build in the U.S.? The fundamental reasons aren’t technical. We’ve structured our postwar economy to use overspending on infrastructure as a way to induce short-term growth.
22
How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?
The Federal Highway Administration has a chart full of answers to that question you might find useful.
23
Approaching Peak Housing Dysfunction in California
San Bruno, California laid out a detailed blueprint for more housing. One developer followed that blueprint. $3 million and 3 years later, the city killed his project anyway.
24
Why parking minimums almost destroyed my town and how we repealed them (2017)
Plus 5 tips for repealing parking minimums in your community.
25
Inefficient, but Smart
Comparing the process of furnishing two apartments—one in Ecuador, the other in the U.S.—was a reminder: order and efficiency aren't always what they're cracked up to be.
26
The Mobility Trap: Why We'll Never Fix Congestion by Speeding Up Traffic
Love to hate congestion? We’ll never fix it by obsessing over speed or traffic delays. We need to rethink our whole transportation debate, starting with this premise: it’s not about how fast you can go. It’s about what you can get to.
27
How Property Taxes Shape Our Cities
Taxation is a powerful planning tool, whether we want it to be or not.
28
“Does induced demand apply to bike lanes?” and other questions
And what this tells us about what the common buzzword really means.
29
There’s no such thing as affordable housing
Los Angeles lost a hundred thousand affordable homes in a decade. Don’t look to bulldozers to explain how.
30
Strong Towns Has Filed a Lawsuit Against the Minnesota Board of Engineering
The Minnesota board that regulates engineering licenses is abusing their power in order to stifle the free speech of Charles Marohn and retaliate against the Strong Towns movement for their advocacy on transportation, infrastructure, and engineering reform. Strong Towns has filed suit in federal cou