American nonprofit organization
Strong Towns is an American nonprofit organization dedicated to helping cities and towns in the United States achieve financial resiliency through civic engagement.[1][2] The advocacy group points to American post-World War II suburban development as a failure[3] and seeks to improve communities through urban planning concepts such as walkability, mixed-use zoning, and infill development.[4] Strong Towns seeks to end American parking mandates[5] and highway expansion[1] and to reduce the country's car dependency.[1][6][7]
History
The organization was founded by Charles Marohn,[8][1]. Marohn is a former professional engineer and city planner,[9] and the organization is headquartered in his home town of Brainerd, Minnesota.[5]
Prior to Strong Towns, Marohn started the Community Growth Institute, his own planning firm, in the early 2000s. Marohn often felt that the cities his firm was collaborating with were becoming overbuilt and could be heading towards financial problems in the long run. Frustrated at officials in these cities resisting change, and feeling the impacts of the 2007–2008 financial crisis, Marohn was spurred into starting a blog to bring attention to these concerns.[10]
The name Strong Towns was chosen by Jon Commers, an associate of Marohn's.[11] Marohn's blog was subsequently renamed from theplannerblog.com to the Strong Towns blog, and in November 2009 the Strong Towns organization was officially launched by Marohn, Commers and Ben Oleson, a former business partner of Marohn's from the Community Growth Institute.[12]
Members
Strong Towns members are primarily from the US and Canada as historically both nations adopted shared approaches to transportation engineering, city planning and zoning during the 20th century. Membership requires a yearly or monthly fee with membership dues being used to fund the operation of the Strong Towns organization.
The Strong Towns 2022 annual report revealed that the organization had 3,665 members at the end of 2022.[13]
