About

What is Strong Towns?

Strong Towns is a movement to build stronger communities across the nation by reevaluating the way we design, zone, and expand our cities. Our Raleigh chapter is bringing the Strong Towns conversation to our city.

What's the issue?

For most of human history, cities were built and scaled around people, and American cities were crafted by the same logic. They grew steadily over time with the people who lived there. That changed around the 1950s when a new urban experiment started across the nation to turn from people-centric to car-centric design.

Cities were now zoned to keep residences and businesses separate, neighborhoods and public places were paved over with parking lots. The outcome was an explosion of car-dependent, urban sprawl. What this cost our communities was a loss of prosperity, connection, and safety.

How are our communities less prosperous?

With the current urban experiment, cities are pushed to expand in massive development projects that become financial burdens and leave them teetering on insolvency.

Take a freshly built suburb. Bringing utilities and access to this new suburb requires a network of infrastructure—pipes, wires, sidewalks, and roads. Initially, the low maintenance costs and boost in tax revenue will produce a net gain. However, when the infrastructure starts to age, the cost to maintain it over such a large area outpaces what the property taxes bring in. This pushes the city to cover the expenses with another massive land development, leading to a snowballing pyramid scheme of unsustainable expansion and an illusion of wealth.

How are our communities less connected?

Most cities are zoned and designed to keep business and residence in separate blocks spread out over large areas. This means that your access to food, work, recreation, nature, schools, your doctor's appointment—access to all of these requires a drive from your house.

Without walkable options or transportation alternatives, residents who cannot afford a car or who physically cannot drive one are shut off from the city they live in. Elderly residents become confined to their homes and children become trapped in their cul-de-sacs without reachable, public places to gather in. So much of our community connection is lost when our daily destinations are kept in a vacuum.

How are our communities less safe?

Sixty-two people died and another 6,247 were injured during Raleigh car wrecks in the year 2022 alone (NC DMV). Most road designs prioritize moving cars quickly over moving them safely. When our city lacks transportation options outside of driving a car, this naturally leads to high-speed roads that are crowded with vehicles.

Whether you are a driver, cyclist, or pedestrian, this puts you at a higher risk of a dangerous or fatal car wreck with each trip you take.