Strong Towns @StrongTowns Twitter profile

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Strong Towns

1 day

We field-tested a new model for cities to use when responding to crashes. Those findings are in the report “Beyond Blame: How Cities Can Learn From Crashes To Create Safer Streets Today.”

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

Philadelphia: 2020 and 2023. Which looks like a more productive street?

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

"As reported by The Globe and Mail, residents spent a total of $181 million at curbside patios within 13 weeks of summer in 2021. If those spaces had remained dedicated to parking, only $3.7 million would have been reaped during the same time period."

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1 year

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2 years

Beautiful transformation in Makati, Philippines. This street is now safer for people walking, rolling, and driving alike due to simple infrastructure changes designed to slow motor vehicles.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

Hoboken, New Jersey is a dense city center that hasn’t had a traffic death in over 4 years. They’ve accomplished this by creating more narrow, one-way streets, high visibility crosswalks, raised intersections, curb extensions, bike & bus lanes, and removing parking spaces.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

We get what we legalize and prioritize.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

“Why don’t people walk anywhere anymore”

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Towns: why does no one spend time here anymore? Also towns:

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

We used to build these all over North America, until zoning laws effectively made them illegal. It’s time to bring back missing middle housing.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

North American cities often go from skyscrapers to sprawl because we’ve made middle housing styles like fourplexes and mixed-use multiplexes illegal. If we want to build livable, human-scale places again, we have to start by legalizing them with zoning and parking reforms.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

10 months

Pedestrian deaths in the US have reached a 40-year high. It’s time for @USDOT to take this crisis seriously and start redesigning our streets to be safe for everyone.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

Historic districts make up some of our highest value areas where people love to visit and long to live, yet we’ve made building this style of development illegal almost everywhere in North America.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

For the first time, the Federal Highway Administration is acknowledging what a stroad is, and by extension, what a street and road are. That's huge!

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Weak Town Strong Town

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Excess parking is a financial drain on cities. Housing is the heart of cities.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

Catfiddle Street in Charleston is a newly built development of 24 homes in a single acre. This should be broadly legalized across North America.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

What does this say about our priorities as a society?

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

A “road diet” is when the number of lanes on a road are reduced to improve safety for people driving, walking, and biking alike, while also providing space for different forms of transportation. Send us a road that could use a diet!

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Picture this: you own a building. One day, you decide to open a business, so you renovate the ground floor into a commercial space and live above it. This scenario was the norm for thousands of years. Today, it’s illegal in most neighborhoods due to zoning and parking laws.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

The top image is from a 1919 map of downtown Atlanta and the bottom is a photo of the same area from 2014. Only one 3-building cluster of this entire multi-block area remains today. Most of the productive architecture has been replaced by wealth-sucking parking lots.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

We need to bring back courtyard buildings!

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

Fragile Town Strong Town

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

If the federal government wants to fund transportation, skip the megaprojects. Start with a billion bollards. These will save more lives and help us build strong towns everywhere.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Our cities used to be built like college campuses. They were walkable communities with mixed housing styles, civic centers, public spaces, and other amenities all woven closely together. College campuses are designed for people. Let's start designing our cities that way.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

11 months

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Activist group @CrosswalksLA has been painting DIY crosswalks since LADOT refused to do so for years. LADOT has even gone as far as removing these DIY crosswalks in parts of the city.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

6 months

Do plant more. 🌳

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

The Netherlands: United States: elementary school elementary school with a bike path inside a highway over its roof on-ramp

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

Imagine how many unique shops would open across the country if we broadly legalized smaller retail spaces? Minimum square footage and lot size requirements stop entrepreneurs who can’t afford larger retail spaces from starting new businesses. They deserve the freedom of choice.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

If someone owns a building and wants to open a hair salon or bakery on the first floor, they should be legally allowed to, by right, in every North American neighborhood.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Which is the stronger street?

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

The Chicago Riverwalk shows us what can happen when a city turns a precious resource into a place for everyone to enjoy and gain value from.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

The question is, why don’t kids hang outside anymore? Maybe it’s because we replaced our downtowns with big box stores, our streets with stroads, and our public squares with parking lots.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

11 months

"As reported by The Globe and Mail, residents spent a total of $181 million at curbside patios within 13 weeks of summer in 2021. If those spaces had remained dedicated to parking, only $3.7 million would have been reaped during the same time period." #BlackFridayParking

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

10 months

This is how we build strong towns!

Qagggy!

@Qagggy

5 years

American cities need to flip the street hierarchy inside out. We need a pedestrian core at the heart of every city and neighborhood.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Cafes and corner stores should be allowed, by right, in every neighborhood. That includes cul-de-sacs.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

German Sierra bought this building in 2020 to open a neighborhood coffee shop in Dallas and still hasn't been able to open because of a regulation requiring he have 18 parking spots, regardless of location, clientele, or local support. Parking mandates kill small businesses.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Want your city to go broke and become unlivable at the same time? This is how you do it.

Patrick Smith

@cityresearch

3 years

when combined, these 7 enormous surface parking lots near downtown Louisville pay only a quarter of the property tax of 1 single nearby apartment building

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

Which daily commute would you prefer?

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

9 months

After the transformation of La Jolla Blvd, noise levels dropped 77%, retail sales rose 30%, and traffic crashes fell by 90%.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

When many Americans hear “mixed-use development” they picture a chain store moving in next to their single-family home. We need to change that picture to neighborhood corner stores and cafes.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

When Americans go on vacation, they like places to conveniently walk or bike around, and yet many of those same people will oppose this walkable urbanism in their own hometowns.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

In a world full of stroads, be a street.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Making a street appear and feel narrower causes drivers to navigate more cautiously, reducing speed and paying closer attention to potential conflicts. Want to make your streets safer? Try optical narrowing.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

We’re not telling society to “ban cars,” we’re asking local governments to stop subsidizing people who drive at the expense of people who don’t in every aspect of how we build places.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

“Why don’t kids play outside anymore?” Look outside. We’ve turned our public spaces into car-only zones filled with parking lots and wide roads. We’ve turned walking or biking around town into a dangerous journey through speeding vehicles.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

The most successful, vibrant cities in the world today look a whole lot like they did a hundred years ago. We know what works. We just need to get to work.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

Streets are better when they’re filled with people, rather than just parked cars.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

No, suburbanization created an enormous *illusion* of wealth for our country.

Moses Kagan

@moseskagan

1 year

I, too, love walkable urbanism. However, we should remember that suburbanization created *enormous* wealth for our country.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Small mixed-use buildings with shops below and housing above should be legalized in every neighborhood.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

For nearly 3 years, Esther Street in Peekskill, New York has been closed to motorized traffic, becoming a beloved gathering place. Now, the city may reopen it due to “numerous complaints.” Let these before and after pictures remind us all that great streets are for PEOPLE.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

This $600 million highway expansion in San Mateo County really did its job!

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Now THIS is a street!

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Many Americans only go out on the weekends because going anywhere requires driving long distances, which takes too much time and energy during the week. But if they could walk down the street to a cafe, pub, park, or library after work, they would go out far more often.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

9 months

US suburbs are a one life-cycle product that depend on new residents to cover their unsustainable maintenance costs. After decades of kicking the can down the road, the early inner-ring suburbs are beginning to unravel.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Just because YOU don’t want to live in an apartment or ride a bike to work doesn’t mean OTHER PEOPLE should be unable to do so. Let’s reform our zoning, permitting, and parking laws so we all have the freedom to choose how we live in society.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

The narrow, car-free streets of Philadelphia are some of the most beloved places in the city. They’re also some of the most expensive areas to live, partially due to scarcity, since we’ve made this development style illegal to build nearly everywhere in America.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

It's so easy: you can make your streets safer by cutting corners. Removing excessive pavement encourages slower vehicle speed, shortens crossing distance, and saves cities money and maintenance.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

For thousands of years, cities and villages around the world built mixed-use buildings with shops on the first floor and housing above. It’s time to re-legalize this across North America.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Prior to World War II, we built places like Galena, Illinois everywhere. Then our development pattern changed from walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods, to car-centric, single-use suburbs. The former is resilient and adaptable. The latter is fragile and inflexible.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

BREAKING: highway expansion doesn't decrease traffic

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Cottage clusters allow people to live in smaller lot homes and share space with their neighbors. They should be broadly legalized across North America.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

9 months

Why do 'booming' American towns struggle to budget for basic services? Look to the suburban development pattern.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

4 months

The damage done by urban renewal and the postwar development pattern can't be overstated.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

North America needs a revitalization of third places like cafes, pubs, libraries, and barber shops. For these places to thrive, we need compact neighborhoods where people can walk or bike to destinations so they can spend more time lingering and less time sitting in traffic.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

In 2017, Time Square went from being a place for cars to a place for people. Reply with another street in North America that should do this!

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

“America can’t be built like Europe, it’s bigger and newer!” This ignores the fact that every American city and small town alike was built to be walkable prior to the invention of cars. Our car-centric development style didn't just happen, it was a result of policies.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

The San Antonio Riverwalk is a walkable public space filled with charming businesses and pathways, which has made it the most popular destination in Texas. Great places like this are common throughout Europe, yet scarce in North America. Why do you think that is?

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

Jane Jacobs taught us the value of fighting for great public spaces and showed us what’s possible when people take them back from cars.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Picture this. You wake up and walk downtown. Neighbors greet you from their porches. The streets are filled with people—kids playing, adults chatting. You run into an old friend and catch up outside a local cafe. This is the life we want to create in cities across North America.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

9 months

Is it possible to build homes for 1.3 million New Yorkers *without* radically changing neighborhood character?

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

This is why we believe people should play a part in designing the places they live.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Most car trips in America are under 6 miles, and they’re for things like groceries, appointments, shopping, and dining. Our built environment requires people to spend thousands of dollars a year on vehicles just to drive a few minutes away.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

10 months

It's time to line every street in North America with bollards.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

Walkable, mixed-use communities aren't confined to just big cities. We can build them in suburban and rural areas as well by reforming zoning and parking laws! (Mount Gretna, PA)

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Our cities aren’t “crowded” or “full,” they’ve just dedicated half their space to car storage.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

11 months

Reminder that all of those dreamy towns you see in holiday themed books and movies would be illegal to build today due to modern parking mandates! #BlackFridayParking

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

There is no coherent argument against lining every street in America with bollards.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

More street trees = more shade, cooler surfaces, slower vehicles, less stormwater runoff, and more beautiful places worth walking!

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

29 days

Why does a city need breakaway poles on a neighborhood street? Breakaway poles are designed to easily snap off if a car hits them, to reduce the harm to the driver. Their very existence shows an expectation that cars will leave a roadway and need a softer landing.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

No, this isn’t a city in Europe, it’s USC Village in Los Angeles, California. We can build walkable, liveable, human-scale places in America. The first step is legalizing them with zoning and parking reforms.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Just like highways don’t have to accommodate people walking, streets don’t have to accommodate people driving.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Prioritizing cars at the expense of other forms of transportation turns places into parking lots.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

11 months

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

It’s not enough to criticize the status quo of North America’s development pattern. If we want to change the way things are, people need hope. They need vision. They need to see what’s possible when we work together to build a better future.

M. Nolan Gray

@mnolangray

2 years

It's easy to get cynical if you're an American urbanist. But remember that the sprawl that surrounds you is a canvas for something so much better.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

Why do people love spending time in downtowns around the world? It’s simple. The narrow streets are designed for walking. The compact neighborhoods create nearby destinations. The trees. The architecture. The culture. The sense of place. This is the blueprint for strong towns.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

Small cafes and corner stores should be allowed, by right, in every American neighborhood.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

In Minneapolis and St. Paul, parking reform has helped increase the overall supply of homes, reduce the cost of construction, and shift the cities toward a less car-centric design.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

Cities should be made for living and lingering, not for vehicles to pass through.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

7 months

This kind of “bike lane” is the result of a bureaucratic design process that’s completely disconnected from human experiences in physical reality. No one who owns a bike would ever approve this design.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

7 months

Want to understand the Growth Ponzi Scheme driving cities to insolvency, and making life more expensive for everyone? Read on 👇 1/

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

“If downtown doesn’t have parking everywhere, visitors might have to park several blocks away!” If your downtown is productive and interesting, visitors will have no problem walking a couple blocks to their destination. Let’s prioritize creating a sense of place before parking.

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

11 months

😬😬😬 #BlackFridayParking

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

1 year

“We did not build places like this because we were rich, we became rich because we built places like this.” - @clmarohn

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Strong Towns

@StrongTowns

2 years

Speed limits don’t determine how fast people drive. Street design does. If we want cars to move slower and safer, we need to design streets that encourage slower driving with features like narrow lanes, tight corners, raised crosswalks, wide sidewalks, and street trees.

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