East Grand Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota, manages to maintain a unique and magical sense of place even while being car-centric. Here’s how it does it, and how other cities can design their built environments to capture that sense of place.
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Many cities try to improve their downtowns through master plans, hoping that grand projects will draw residents and customers into the city core. But this often fails because truly strong, attractive downtowns form through incremental development.
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If you are a tourism marketer, how can you work to make your town more sustainable, resilient and attractive to visitors? And how do you do it in a way that balances the needs of the community? Here are a few ideas to get you started.
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North America is facing two widespread crises at the same time: housing and loneliness. This group is proving that cohousing might be the solution to both.
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When discussing redevelopment, street design isn’t what most people think of. Since North American streets are often built to completion, this kind of incremental approach seems alien. But it’s exactly what cities need to improve their economic, social and environmental conditions.
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Car-sharing gives people the perks of a private vehicle without the hassles of owning one, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Here's how urbanists can use this car-rental model to strengthen their communities.
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When fighting the housing crisis, you need to get creative. Toronto is doing just that. Not only have they created a partnership between public officials and private developers, but they’ve also identified a valuable urban resource that often flies under the development radar: transit property.
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No city is an island, and no city can judge its place in the housing crisis based solely on local demand. They must also consider how their restrictive policies may be driving housing demand to other places — or how other cities may be driving demand to them.
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Building affordable housing seems like a win for cities struggling in the Housing Trap. But between its top-down nature and the public subsidies it requires, affordable housing can actually make things worse.
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They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Oregon policymakers seem to disagree, as they plan to pour $30 million of taxpayer money into reviving container shipping services at the Port of Portland…even though it’s been a consistent economic failure.
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Rates of loneliness and unhappiness are on the rise in the United States, but our European counterparts don’t seem to have the same problem. Why? Part of the reason is the way our built environment isolates us.
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Susan Graham and Ally Smither have very different life experiences — one as a former nurse and the other as an opera singer — but they’ve come together to pursue the same goal: Stopping highway expansion in Houston.
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From college students trying to make ends meet to older individuals who need support from live-in caretakers, occupancy limits make life unnecessarily difficult for a lot of people. Colorado has passed a law that’s going to change that.
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This special edition of Upzoned was recorded last week at the 2024 National Gathering. From business owners to zoning reform experts, Abby talks with attendees about their efforts to build stronger towns.
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When people first started building malls, they had no way of knowing that dramatic shifts in technology and consumer patterns would destroy their business models. What they should've known, though, was that betting all their funding and economic stability on a single project was a bad idea. Let’s not repeat their mistakes.
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How do you get more people to ride bicycles? This is a question that plagues every cycling enthusiast, advocate and industry member. Bob Giordano of Missoula, Montana, has a simple answer: Give them a bike.
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Megan Kimble, journalist and author of “City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America's Highways,” joins us to talk about highway expansion in Texas and the groups fighting to stop it.
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City engineers rely on faulty logic and misrepresentations to maintain the status quo. This was made blatantly clear in a recent letter from the City Engineers Association of Minnesota (CEAM) — and it’s why a growing number of engineers are breaking from the party line to support reform. Here are CEAM’s top four arguments against parking reform and why they’re wrong.
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Public bathrooms are an essential component of people-centered places. In addition to maintaining public health, they encourage foot traffic and community, as people are more likely to frequent an area when they know bathrooms will be available — especially if they have children or medical conditions.
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Habitat for Humanity offers a wide range of programs to help people become homeowners, giving the organization a unique perspective on the housing crisis. Strong Towns sat down with two representatives to learn about this perspective, including how Habitat is handling high building costs and why Habitat owners participate in the construction of their homes.
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