Just noticed the National Gathering that Strong Towns holds yearly, this year on March 14-15 in Cincinnati. I was wondering if anyone has gone in previous years and can share more about their experience? I'm curious if going this year or next and was wondering if you could speak on what to expect, what to learn, etc.

https://gathering.strongtowns.org/

I'm thinking about hoovering up all the StrongTowns reddit posts, website/blog content, book PDFs, etc to train a StrongTownsGPT LLM.

The idea is simple, open another lane of information for those with a more interactive learning style. Would Redditors use it? Would outsiders you're trying to communicate with benefit from it? LMK.

(Or maybe more generally it could be an urbanistGPT?)

I’m curious to hear about your experiences in advocating for less car-centric city planning to your local city council or other elected officials. Whether it was about adding bike lanes, improving public transit, or pedestrian-friendly spaces, how did it go? Did you face challenges? Any success stories or tips you’d like to share?

Looking forward to learning from your experiences!

Does anyone have information on effective traffic calming measures that can be implimented quickly and without a traffic study? My state DOT recommendations all require an initial traffic atudy.

Question in the title - after reading a number of posts, I have been confused.

Does anyone know a good way to identify major property owners in a city? Since these are going to be commercial companies and lots of them tend to spin up multiple LLCs for liability reasons, it's hard to connect all the dots to say which properties are under the same controlling party when the tax records all record different owners.

The best idea I've had is to look for groups of properties that all use the same owner mailing address in the tax records to indicate they're owned by the same org. This doesn't work super well because A) even writing database queries to do this, it's very time consuming and B) many times these addresses are actually for a law firm or property manager acting as an agent for the real owner and likely providing that same service for many different owners.

I'm new to strong towns and I don't know much outside of Not Just Bike's videos on them.

Headline really should read: The man who self-immolated outside the Trump trial today is a former Strong Towns employee

As far as I am aware, he is alive and in critical condition. According to his LinkedIn, he worked at Strong Towns from 2017-2018.

https://www.newsweek.com/read-max-azzarello-manifesto-about-lighting-himself-fire-trump-trial-1892368

Chuck's live and will be answering questions throughout the day! Join the discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1c7yhxy/im_the_founder_of_strong_towns_a_national/

America is trapped in a housing paradox. In the same breath, we demand housing be “a good investment” and “broadly affordable.” And yet, it can’t be both.

This is the housing trap.

In their new book, “Escaping The Housing Trap,” (housingtrap.org) Charles "Chuck" Marohn and Daniel Herriges unravel this trap. They investigate the rise of housing financial products, Euclidean zoning, and post-WW2 development patterns to answer, “How did we get here, and how can we escape?”

On Friday, April 19th starting at 9:30 AM Central, Chuck is hosting an AMA on /r/IamA to answer your questions and engage in discussion about the housing crisis.

Hi all! I'm trying to become better at advocacy, engaging city government and that kind of stuff. I found this channel called the Nth City who started a series on exactly this topic. I found the first video really useful, so I'm sharing here.

Link: Change your City. This is How you Start.

Does anyone have an update on the Santa Clara, CA Strong Towns chapter?

I learned of ST very recently from a video and wanted to see if there's a local chapter. I saw on the website that there's one in Santa Clara (South Bay Area) and there was even a contact email. I sent an email a few months ago but haven't heard back.

I'm also frustrated because I've tried to join the ST Facebook group twice and have been rejected both times. I filled out their form correctly, but they don't give any feedback on why I wasn't accepted.

I want to help make my city better but this is dousing my fire. Any advice?

I'm fairly new to the Strong Towns conversation and community, but I like a lot of what I've read and heard. At the same time my city of Columbus, OH is updating their zoning code and will soon be in public comment period - so as a Strong Towns Newbie looking for advice... what do you think of Columbus' approach?

https://columbusunderground.com/zoning-updates-heading-to-city-council-on-monday-we1/

Seems to me to make some sense to focus on improving density in specific corridors instead of city wide repeal of things like parking mandates and single family housing. On the other hand is this just a half measure that's slowing down what actually needs to be done to improve density and housing?

TLDR: Columbus OH is revising their zoning code to allow for more density and removing parking requirements, BUT only on select parcels along certain corridors, not city wide. Is this good, an okay first step, or just flat out not enough?

i wanna experience the vice infrastructure and travel around sight seeing. any suggestions or known guides?

much love

The guy gets a lot of credit for making accessible videos on urbanism, and talks about tactics relating to Strong Towns. I guess one of my critiques is his approach of suburban/exurban develop. He mostly ridicules those who lives in them, calls them idiots, etc... I come from the approach of treating the people who disagree with you with respect and don't think the way to get people to your ideas is ridicule. Also the guy is incredibly nihilistic. I guess I am a little worried he might do more harm than good. Its the view of a snobbish person that really turns many people off to the ideas of New Urbanism (coastal elites vs. flyover states type of division). It is something you don't see with Charles Marohn who from what I've seen interacts with everyone at a human level with a degree of respect. I am curious what your thoughts are?

https://preview.redd.it/sqm38xa0l6sc1.jpg?width=782&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2e81a25147e00009db7dd98fde58b0ef821fc8a6

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Come meet me at the Alameda County Community engagement meeting. They're looking at redesigning San Pablo, a major Stroad, to have an exclusive bus and bike lane. Come add your voice in person or digitally to get this stroad turned in to a vital through-way for public and active transportation. Meet local bike community members and find out about other events and resources. See you there!

https://preview.redd.it/2rt1yr3gexrc1.png?width=2340&format=png&auto=webp&s=c8548162140735606b569436007068291b100bb4

https://sanpabloave.mysocialpinpoint.com/

I'll be honest I'm rather clueless on it this sort of change would be possible even on a small scale like mine, but I'm wondering if it is something I could do.