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.

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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?

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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.

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

Illinois is short roughly 130,000 homes today and needs about 240,000 more by 2030. The state can’t change mortgage rates or material costs, so Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois is targeting something else: the rules that make homes hard to build. He walks through the Build Initiative, a set of bills to legalize more ADUs and small multifamily buildings, relax some parking and stairway requirements, standardize impact fees, and put limits on permit delays. He also talks about local pushback, bipartisan support, and why these modest changes could mean more housing choices without the sense that neighborhoods are being upended.

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

A trip to Italy left Chuck surprised by how ordinary Catholic life felt in a country filled with churches. A later visit to Hasidic Brooklyn stayed with him for a different reason: families living under intense physical constraints, yet ordering their lives around faith and community. Those memories frame this talk at a Catholic church in Minnesota, where Chuck turns from faraway examples to a more personal question: what would it mean for a parish to care not only for the sanctuary, but for the blocks around it?

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

Congressman Jake Auchincloss joins the the Strong Towns podcast with a case for localism that takes it seriously without treating it as a cure-all. He explains why localism deserves a bigger role in national politics, not as a slogan, but as a way to rebuild trust and solve problems closer to the ground. That idea gets tested against some of the hardest problems facing cities today: transportation systems that reward expansion over maintenance, a housing market that has lost its entry-level rung, and federal policies that often struggle to match local realities. The conversation closes with a warning about digital life and a defense of face-to-face community.

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Is a city “dynamic” just because its charts point up and to the right? Chuck uses a week in the UK to question that assumption. In Manchester, a swelling population of 20‑somethings looks like success, until you notice how many smaller places have been drained to supply that energy. In one of those towns, residents speak of decline, crime, and the loss of their pub, even as few can name a moment they truly felt unsafe. Across focus groups, government programs, and carefully planned districts, he traces the same pattern and asks: when growth is easy to measure, what deeper dynamism are we missing?

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When planner Patrick Kennedy started asking why prime land near downtown Dallas was filled with parking lots and boarded‑up buildings, the trail led straight to an elevated freeway: I‑345. He explains how making a hard economic case for removal—showing that taking the highway out could deliver the highest return on investment with minimal traffic impacts—grew into the Atlas of Inner City Highway Impacts, a data‑driven look at 142 U.S. cities. Kennedy details how inner‑city highways consume acres of valuable land, depress nearby property values, and either clog up all day in thriving metros or cut through struggling ones at full speed, while federal funding formulas and induced demand keep pushing us toward more lanes.

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Speaking to planners in New Zealand, Chuck Marohn connects the country’s adopted infrastructure plan with a global pattern of cities that have grown themselves into insolvency. He traces the shift from incremental, pre‑Depression neighborhoods to postwar sprawl and explores what it looks like for planners to stop chasing the next expansion and start making better use of what’s already built.

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you!

Good arguments fail when they ignore how people feel. Chuck Marohn and Joshua Bandoch talk through using empathy, ethical persuasion, and values-based stories with everyone from public works directors to concerned residents. Their examples reveal why understanding fears and incentives often matters more than another chart or study.

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you!