Hey everybody,

When I first started writing the blog that would become Strong Towns back in 2008, my commitment was to writing three days a week. Monday was a thought column, Wednesday was a follow-up, and then there was something I called the Friday News Digest.

It was a collection of links and hot takes, and I loved writing it. As Strong Towns grew and my responsibilities multiplied, I just couldn’t deliver it the way I wanted and it became one of those things we used to do. Well, with our recently announced leadership transition and my new set of responsibilities, now seemed like the perfect time to bring it back.

Enjoy, and feel free to pass this on to your friend, council member, or favorite gadfly.

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• One pushback we’ve received on our Housing-Ready Toolkit is the call for 24-hour permit review on entry-level housing. It’s true that it can’t be done without rethinking the process, but that’s different than “it can’t be done.”
  
  

  In fact, as the Washington Post reported, pre-approved building plans are one of the ways cities — including cities with limited staff — are making next-day permitting happen.

Aaron Sprik has been building houses for 25 years. Recently, he experienced something new. He applied for a city permit to build four duplexes, side by side. And within 24 hours, he had the permit in hand. “I’ve never had anything even close to that fast” from a city, he said.

— The Washington Post

• The Local Conversation in Bloomington-Normal — Strong Towns BloNo — has been one of the smartest and most strategic-minded of the now 273 Strong Towns Local Conversations.
  
  

  The most recent example is a collaboration they fostered to do sidewalk murals connecting the downtown and the library. It’s a genius concept to not only foster community pride but to strengthen the walking connections between two important destinations, places that are becoming — thanks to Strong Towns BloNo — increasingly safe and walkable.

Last year's mural project was very much intended to be temporary. It was meant to be proof of concept to demonstrate this pathway and also start relationship building. This year, we wanted to repeat that route and invest in that habit-building of folks that are looking for a safe walking route from Bloomington Public Library to the downtown and really make it evident to folks that this route is walkable, and it can be beautiful as well along the way.

— Hannah Johnson, The Pantagraph

• Jersey City is a nationwide leader in safe streets. They have a commitment to quick-build projects that has allowed them to make meaningful changes to dangerous streets. National Gathering 2024 attendees heard Barkha Patel, former Director of Infrastructure for Jersey City, tell us all about it — super impressive.
  
  

  Well, for everyone else, know that even Jersey City still has struggles, demonstrated by six drivers that blew through a new stop sign during, of all things, a traffic safety press conference. They were all ticketed. (Shout out to Strong Towns member Andrew Price, who first shared this on the Commons.)

You can do really easy investments by rethinking the way your infrastructure department works. It doesn’t have to be high cost.

— Hoboken Mayor Emily Jabbour, NJ.com

• My own city is in the process of selling a downtown parking lot to turn it into housing. It’s the most obvious positive move — downtown has way too much parking and not enough people and tax base — but that doesn’t mean it isn’t controversial. This IG short out of Grand Rapids, Michigan, is very shareable and does a nice job of summarizing the parking problem most cities face.

• We’ve seen members of the public step up when things fall apart and nothing is done to stop the decline, but I’ve never seen something like this.
  
  

  In Alberta — and, of course, this is happening in Canada — local contractors provided volunteers with shovels, rakes, and heavy equipment, along with a truck of asphalt, to fill potholes along the highway. It’s not clear if this should make us all hopeful or dejected. (Thanks to Strong Towns member and National Gathering 2026 debater Nathan Hawryluk for sharing this article in the Commons.)

Excessively large potholes, lack of functional lighting throughout most of the townsite, inadequate plowing, insufficient mowing of ditches and flooding are all negatively impacting the usability of the road and the health of our community.

— MP Laila Goodridge, CBC News

• Last month, the city of Charlotte voted to rescind its approval of a highway expansion project, the I-77 South toll lane. The Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization backed out a week later. Home removal in an historically Black neighborhood has been the political flashpoint, but this is another silly expansion project with a $600M price tag and little measurable financial benefit, especially to Charlotte. They were right to back out.
  
  

  Now, there is a move in the North Carolina legislature to make Charlotte compensate the state for the $60M they supposedly spent on design. Cities, did you realize that not opposing a project early and loudly could potentially make you liable for the budget of your state’s DOT?

This is me actually being kind to the city of Charlotte and to those communities who did vote to rescind their vote, and I am communicating to you right now that this will happen. This is not a joke. You will lose this, and you will have to pay back the money to the state. When you are 15 years into a project, and then on a political whim, overnight, rip it out, you are doing generational damage to your community.

— North Carolina Sen. Vickie Sawyer, WCNC Charlotte

• Are electric charging stations reshaping travel patterns across North America? Perhaps, at least in the near term. What I like most about this video is watching someone see opportunity where others see leftovers. He takes pieces that many small towns would consider hardly worth saving and combines them into something far more valuable than any one piece could be on its own. Very Strong Towns.

• I’m a huge fan of Jarrett Walker and the work he does to optimize transit systems. The latest comes from Des Moines, where an obsolete transit network was updated to not only improve service, but to do so while staying within a constrained budget.
  
  

  I’m convinced that the way you build support for transit is to emphasize ridership (improving reliability and frequency). I’m also convinced that the way you slowly starve transit of support is by emphasizing coverage area (sacrificing reliability and frequency). Every city that wants to grow support for transit should be following Human Transit.

• When I started blogging in 2008, I was toiling in relative obscurity — as I probably should have been, especially in those early days — until one of the country’s most prominent bloggers, Kaid Benfield at NRDC, started linking to my stuff. It was a huge shot in the arm, indicative of the days when “link love” meant so much.
  
  

  Kaid and I have become friends, met in person a few times, and he is really a delightful guy. This week he launched a new website — peoplehabitat.com — featuring his book, writings, and other stuff worth checking out. Let’s keep the link love going!

• And finally, I’m not a soccer fan — also not a soccer hater, either, just not been exposed a whole lot — but, like many of you, I have enjoyed the accounts of non-Americans getting a chance to experience parts of our culture, both good and bad. Even so, my favorite story from the World Cup is Japan sharing their culture with us. I’ve never been to Japan, but I would so very much love to visit and get to know them better. This is beautiful.

Thanks everyone, and have a great weekend. If you want to chat, the place I spend the most time is the Strong Towns Commons, so head over there and comment on this digest or send me a message.