Strong Towns isn’t your traditional nonprofit. Begun as a blog by civil engineer and city planner Chuck Marohn, Strong Towns highlighted in rigorous detail the self-defeating nature of so many well-intended, topdown projects. Somehow, a blog for civic development “nerds” grew a wide following, and Mr. Marohn ended up speaking both to specialists and to city activist groups around the Midwest (he is based in Brainerd, MN), then around the nation.
Today, Strong Towns helps foster and promote a model of development that better positions America’s cities and towns to become financially strong and resilient. Marohn and his team work all across the country to help city leaders avoid unsustainable infrastructure projects and make changes that actually work for communities. While around thirty percent of Strong Town’s 5,000 members are city officials and planners, most are local citizens who want healthy communities unburdened by backwards city policies. And they’ve activated themselves in many cases, leading Strong Towns to a recent shift in strategy:
We are focusing really intently on the bottom-up energy. And that’s where our Local Conversations program comes in. When I say we started that program last year, we started it formally last year. People were already meeting and calling themselves Strong Towns Tulsa, Strong Towns Dallas, Strong Towns McAlester (OK), and others. We had no clue what these groups were, but we watched them, and we saw them doing amazing things. They were cleaning up the park. They were putting out benches. . . They were showing up at city council meetings and bringing the math that [city] staff were not putting together on their projects.
Recognizing the potential of self-starting allies, Strong Towns provides their members with the types of tools that municipal leaders have to make changes. Two of their top programs for doing so are their Local Conversations program and Strong Towns Academy, both of which help citizens hold their city leaders accountable.
Strong Towns helps foster and promote a model of development that better positions America’s cities and towns to become financially strong and resilient.