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Strong Towns

The Strong Towns Podcast is a weekly conversation on the Strong Towns movement, hosted by Strong Towns Founder and President Charles Marohn and frequently featuring special guests. The podcast explores how we can financially strengthen our cities, towns, and neighborhoods and, in the process, make them better places to live. Join Chuck in examining how everything from urban design to economics to systems theory to psychology helps inform this core question.

The Strong Towns Podcast

A strong bond rating can tell investors that a city is likely to repay its debt. It says much less about whether that city can afford to replace the roads, pipes, and other infrastructure its residents depend on. Richard Ciccarone, president emeritus of Merit Research Services, developed a new metric using financial statements from nearly 2,000 cities to estimate that burden. When he compared the infrastructure burden with government bond ratings, the correlation was surprisingly weak. Cities can remain attractive to creditors while aging assets accumulate replacement costs that no bondholder can force them to address.

Additional Show Notes

Richard Ciccarone • (LinkedIn)

Infrastructure & Capital Assets Commitment Burden: Quantifying the Hidden Fiscal Risk • (PDF)

 • '
We Built the Best Interstate System. Now It’s Falling Apart. • ' (Video)

Mission Accomplished Report • (Site)

Chuck Marohn • (Substack)

 

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

The $1 Trillion Infrastructure Backlog Cities Aren’t Counting

Atlanta’s Buford Highway supports apartment communities, small businesses, and an international food scene that draws people from across the region. It also carries six to eight lanes of fast traffic, and drivers use it as an alternate route when nearby interstates clog. More than 20% of trips happen outside a car, yet roughly 90% of the corridor’s space is reserved for vehicles. Rebecca Serna, executive director of Propel ATL, and Sagirah Jones, the organization’s program director, hosted walk audits to put residents, planners, and elected officials on the same road and show how people navigate it every day. The audits exposed an unexpected barrier: many people supported bigger changes while remaining convinced that someone else would never allow them.

Additional Show Notes

Rebecca Serna • (LinkedIn)

Sagirah Jones • (LinkedIn)

Propel ATL • (Site)

Buford Highway Community Walk Audit Summary of Findings • (PDF)

AARP Walk Audit Tool Kit • (Site)

 • '
We Built the Best Interstate System. Now It’s Falling Apart. • ' (Video)

Mission Accomplished Report • (Site)

Chuck Marohn • (Substack)

 

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

This Atlanta Corridor Makes Walking Normal and Deadly

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 users fully fund it. Rebecca Higgins, vice president of policy at the Eno Center for Transportation, explains how the fund reached this point and why the gap keeps growing. She and Chuck examine the choices lawmakers have avoided for decades, including higher taxes, lower spending, new fees, or a smaller federal role, and what happens when highway funding begins competing with other underfunded national priorities.

Additional Show Notes

Rebecca Higgins • (LinkedIn)

The Eno Center for Transportation • (Site)

The Last Exit: Fixing the Highway Trust Fund while Solvency is still Solvable • (Report)

 • '
We Built the Best Interstate System. Now It’s Falling Apart. • ' (Video)

Mission Accomplished Report • (Site)

Chuck Marohn • (Substack)

 

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

America’s Half-Funded Highway System

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 another approach: build a temporary version, invite people into it, gather data, and adjust what does not work. She and Chuck talk about winning over skeptical engineers, learning from residents, and making safer streets without waiting for a perfect plan. The goal is not to prove the first idea was correct, but to learn enough, quickly enough, to make the next decision better.

Additional Show Notes

Krista Nightengale • (LinkedIn)

Better Block • (Site)

Wikiblock • (Site)

Chuck Marohn • (Substack)

 

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

A Better Block Versus Years of Planning

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 cities cannot maximize frequency, coverage, and affordability at the same time. In Des Moines, the tradeoff comes with a 10% service cut, long waits, indirect routes, and streets that make some bus stops difficult or dangerous to reach. To understand whether the system is useful enough for people to actually rely on it, Walker asks a more revealing question: how much of the city can someone reach within a reasonable amount of time?

Additional Show Notes

 • Jarrett Walker (
LinkedIn • , 
Site • )

Human Transit • (Book)

Des Moines: Welcome to Your New Transit Network • (Article)

Final Network Report Reimagine DART • (PDF)

Chuck Marohn • (Substack)

 

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

The Transit Tradeoff No City Can Escape

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 episode, he talks about the second edition of Street Design: The Secret to Great Cities and Towns and why great streets have to be designed as places, not just routes. Dover makes the case that beauty belongs in the brief from the beginning, because when a street is designed only for traffic flow, that is all it can ever really become: a place for traffic.

Additional Show Notes

Victor Dover • (LinkedIn)

Street Design • (Book)

Dover, Kohl, & Partners • (Site)

Chuck Marohn • (Substack)

 

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

Why Great Streets Are Not Enhancements

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 to the Strong Towns Podcast to talk about the latest Dangerous by Design report and the choices that keep making American roads so deadly. She and Chuck dig into why state-owned roads are especially dangerous, how street design shapes driver behavior, and why blaming pedestrians or waiting for automated vehicles keeps the focus away from the roads themselves. The big question is this: when will we stop treating roadway deaths as the cost of getting around and start changing the roads that make them predictable?

Additional Show Notes

Beth Osborne • (LinkedIn)

Smart Growth America • (Site)

Dangerous by Design 2026 Report • (PDF)

The Deadly Rise of Giant Trucks and S.U.V.s • (Article)

Chuck Marohn • (Substack)

 

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

The Deadly Road Design We Keep Defending

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 everything landing on his desk, and introduces the organization’s new Executive Director. His guest shares how he found Strong Towns as a Sandpoint city council member, his organizing work in Idaho and at the League of Conservation Voters, and why he finally decided he had to be inside the organization, not just on the board. Together, they talk about culture, management, local conversations, and the kind of leadership Strong Towns needs for its next phase.

Additional Show Notes

John Reuter • (LinkedIn)

Strong Towns Team • (Site)

Chuck Marohn • (Substack)

 

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

Inside the Strong Towns Leadership Transition

Lars Doucet digs into a problem that shows up in expensive cities, sprawling suburbs, and even countries Americans often point to as models: land. Monopoly, he argues, became frustrating by design because it captured something real about how land markets work. The episode connects that lesson to housing costs, land value tax, Henry George, Norway, Texas, sprawl, and the uncomfortable question every city eventually faces: who gets the value created by a place?

Additional Show Notes

Lars Doucet • (LinkedIn)

Land Economics • (Site)

Land is a Big Deal • (Site)

Enacting Land Value Return in your hometown • (Substack)

Chuck Marohn • (Substack)

 

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

What's the Housing Crisis Beneath the Housing Crisis?

Beth Osborne has watched the same story play out five times: a new federal transportation bill arrives with big language about goals and accountability, states adopt the right words, and nothing changes. Osborne, who led Transportation for America and worked inside USDOT, has been through five federal transportation reauthorizations, watched reform language get adopted and neutralized every single time, and arrived at a conclusion that would have surprised her younger self. Recorded at the Strong Towns National Gathering in Fayetteville, Arkansas, this conversation with Chuck Marohn digs into the gap between what the federal transportation program claims to do and what it actually delivers — on safety, on repair, on congestion, on emissions — and whether there's any version of federal involvement worth keeping.

Additional Show Notes

Beth Osborne • (LinkedIn)

Transportation for America • (Site)

Mission Accomplished Report • (Site)

The Highway Expansion Lightning Lane • (Substack)

Chuck Marohn • (Substack)

 

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

Rethinking the Federal Role in Transportation

On the day of the first presidential debate, Chuck records a solo Week Ahead podcast to look back at last week's event in Knoxville, this week's event in Edina and a little annoucement on next week.

The Week Ahead, September 26, 2016

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