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Back the movement for stronger places today. buff.ly/SUd8A1o

Today is Giving Tuesday. The challenges our cities face are growing, but so is the strength of this movement. Every story we share, every idea we spread, and every tool we build exists because people like you are committed to showing up.

It trained us to experience isolation as prosperity and consumption as citizenship.

But if the Suburban Experiment trained us this way, then Strong Towns, this bottom-up movement, is teaching us the opposite. It’s teaching us that we will not outsource belonging.

The Suburban Experiment promised prosperity and wealth by spreading out. But the farther we spread out, the more abstract our systems became.

The Suburban Experiment didn’t just change our geography. It rewired our culture.

Read more in "Complete Streets in Name Only: How Federal Transportation Policy Undermines Local Outcomes" on our site: buff.ly/6YesJwU

By aligning itself with federal funding mechanisms, proponents allowed its priorities to be diluted.

Instead of producing streets that are safe, human-scaled, and integrated into neighborhoods, we’ve ended up with expensive projects that serve as compliance exercises.

A citizen-led Crash Analysis Studio examining the crash found that the crossing itself is shadowed by poor lighting, flanked by signage that obstructs visibility, and surrounded by traffic traveling well above the posted 30 mph speed limit.

Despite these accolades, a pedestrian — Hellen Jorgensen — was killed at the only designated crossing along the corridor.

Take Ager Road in Hyattsville, Maryland as an example, less than 7 miles away from Washington D.C.

The Ager Road project cost approximately $15 million and was heralded as a model of the "Green-Complete Streets" approach.

They’re local to the community. They have skin in the game. They build the things that they—and the community—want to live, work, and shop in.

Learn more about how incremental development can help us escape the housing trap in the fourth episode of Stacked Against Us! buff.ly/ylocD6w

And he continues to live and work by that idea: during an interview for Stacked Against Us, he was actually *in* a retail center he was rehabbing.

This dedication to place is part of what sets incremental developers apart.

Leawood can follow their example.

Read more in “Low Crime, High Risk: The Deadly Streets of Kansas City’s Safest Suburb” on our site. buff.ly/BJ9D3zK

While some of the deadly corridors are getting a redesign, it’s worth asking what can be done sooner or in the interim. Other cities like Charlottesville, Jersey City, and Indianapolis are already making changes to their streets using insights from the Crash Analysis Studio.

Read more on our site: buff.ly/kpEIkUW

It wasn’t the exact plan the community had hoped for, but it’s still progress. Families are already walking along streets that feel safer, and the Local Conversation isn’t stopping here. They’ll keep pushing for additional improvements so every child can travel safely to school.