The Strong Towns Podcast

The Highway Trust Fund brings in roughly $45 billion a year and spends closer to $80 billion. Congress keeps the system running by borrowing the difference and moving that money into a program still treated as if road...

Cities often spend years studying a street before making a change, only to discover that the public is reacting to plans no one has actually experienced. Krista Nightengale, executive director of Better Block, explains...

Putting a route near every community sounds fair until the buses only arrive once an hour. Jarrett Walker, author of Human Transit and principal of the firm helping Des Moines rethink its bus network, explains why...

Street trees, benches, slower speeds, and beautiful proportions are often treated as extras, added only after the “real” engineering work is done. Victor Dover argues that this gets the whole assignment wrong. In this...

Pedestrian deaths have climbed sharply since 2009, yet transportation agencies often point to small, recent dips as proof that things are getting better. Beth Osborne, president and CEO of Smart Growth America, returns...

Strong Towns has always warned cities about the danger of fragile growth. Now, Chuck is applying that same lesson to the movement he helped build. In this episode, Chuck explains why Strong Towns can no longer depend on...

Illinois is short roughly 130,000 homes today and needs about 240,000 more by 2030. The state can’t change mortgage rates or material costs, so Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois is targeting something else: the rules...

A trip to Italy left Chuck surprised by how ordinary Catholic life felt in a country filled with churches. A later visit to Hasidic Brooklyn stayed with him for a different reason: families living under intense physical...

Congressman Jake Auchincloss joins the the Strong Towns podcast with a case for localism that takes it seriously without treating it as a cure-all. He explains why localism deserves a bigger role in national politics...

Is a city “dynamic” just because its charts point up and to the right? Chuck uses a week in the UK to question that assumption. In Manchester, a swelling population of 20‑somethings looks like success, until you notice...

When planner Patrick Kennedy started asking why prime land near downtown Dallas was filled with parking lots and boarded‑up buildings, the trail led straight to an elevated freeway: I‑345. He explains how making a hard...

Speaking to planners in New Zealand, Chuck Marohn connects the country’s adopted infrastructure plan with a global pattern of cities that have grown themselves into insolvency. He traces the shift from incremental...

Good arguments fail when they ignore how people feel. Chuck Marohn and Joshua Bandoch talk through using empathy, ethical persuasion, and values-based stories with everyone from public works directors to concerned...

Chuck and Kevin Klinkenberg explore why progress comes from people who stop waiting for permission and start doing things locally. They look at incremental developers, neighborhood groups, and the limits of top-down...

Chuck Marohn and Tony Dutzik unpack the messy history of the gas tax, cross‑subsidies between states, and the moral story drivers were told about “user fees.” They revisit highway revolts, the rise of federal transit...