Agenda

What if place branding wasn’t about logos, slogans, or tourism campaigns, but about shaping the future of a community?

In this session, Ryan Short explores a reframing of place branding as a shared north star that helps communities align identity, investment, and decision-making. When done well, place branding clarifies what a place stands for and helps guide everything from public engagement and economic development to placemaking and long-term growth.

But strong places are not created by consultants or city halls alone. They are shaped by residents, advocates, and local leaders who care enough to get involved.

Drawing from real projects and insights from his book The Civic Brand: The Power & Responsibility of Place, Ryan explores the role everyday people play in shaping their communities. Because the places we love do not happen by accident. They happen when people recognize both the power they hold and the responsibility they share to shape them.

The hardest part of town making isn’t financing, design, or construction, it’s getting started.

Most people don’t struggle because they lack resources; they struggle because they don’t know how to spot a real opportunity.

In this session, we focus on how opportunities actually show up. Often, they’re not pretty. They’re the ugliest building on a good street, a forgotten property in the right location, or a place that can be bought at the right price and patiently made better.

Using the 12 Steps to Town Making and the five pillars, farming, form, finance, the flywheel, and the ecosystem we show how to evaluate a place, reduce risk, and take the first small, workable step forward.

This session is for anyone who wants to make money, do good, and help build stronger neighborhoods — one opportunity at a time.

Why are so many cities and towns across North America going broke? Our roads are deteriorating. Our governments are in debt. No matter how much we increase them, our taxes aren’t enough to fix it all. And no one seems to be able to agree on how we got here—much less how to change the course. This isn’t just about numbers on a budget. This is about the fate of the communities we love most, and the real people that live there. This is about how to give our citizens, today and tomorrow, a chance at the future they deserve. If we want American cities to be strong and resilient, we need to change everything about the way we plan and build our places. In this core Strong Towns presentation, Charles Marohn will explain, in plain language, how so many American cities have found themselves in decline after decades of “growth.” And then he’ll show you a revolutionary way forward that could create enduring prosperity—if we just have the courage to change our minds. If you’re new to the Strong Towns movement or you’ve never seen our core presentation, you might want to join this session.

You already know that parking minimums, setback requirements, and stone-age zoning laws make walkable community nearly impossible. Spoiler: The same antiquated town-building techniques help create a bangin’ loneliness epidemic too. Come check out the tactical interventions by imaginative neighbors who are crowbarring connection into environments that weren't designed for it.

In this session, Kat Vellos, human-centered designer and author of We Should Get Together, shares examples of how everyday people and forward-thinking municipalities are hacking their built environments to foster the human connection that prior planners wrongly assumed we could all live without. Through memorable case studies and facilitated peer discussion, you'll identify concrete ideas you can implement right away, whether you're a resident ready to activate your block or a staffer positioned to make your policies more connection-oriented. Come ready to laugh, rant, and plot the friendship-friendly revolution your community deserves — you'll leave with ideas, inspiration, and maybe even a new friend or two.

Strong local movements are built on relationships. Yet many Local Conversation leaders struggle with the same challenge: how do you grow your leadership team and engage members more deeply without burning out? The most powerful tools community organizers use to solve this problem is the one-on-one meeting.

In this hands-on training, Mary Kate Norton will introduce participants to the organizing practice of one-on-ones. Through a model and structured practice, attendees will learn how to hold a meaningful meeting that builds trust, uncovers values, grows motivation, and strengthens relationships. If you’re looking to build the skills to lead bottom-up neighborhood transformation, this session is for you.

In this talk, Jon Jon outlines practical ways to retrofit the places we already live, from small, individual actions to larger neighborhood-led projects. We are often told that if we want to live in a village, we must first become villagers. The implication is that community depends mostly on how outgoing, generous, or selfless we are. But what if the struggle to connect is not a character flaw, but a design flaw?

The session features real-world examples from Jon Jon’s travels across the country, highlighting projects that make connection easier. The aim is not to make people try harder or turn them into extroverts. The aim is to shape neighborhoods where connection happens naturally and community is supported by design rather than sustained by exhaustion.

Across North America, Strong Towns Local Conversations show how ordinary people can make real change in their communities. Come celebrate and learn from three groups transforming their towns one conversation, one bus bench at a time.

Leaders from Strong Towns PDX, Strong Towns Chicago, and Spokane Reimagined will share stories from their cities, including the wins that kept them going and the challenges that pushed them to adapt. From organizing neighbors around safer streets and housing reform to quick-build and tactical projects, these groups show what local leadership can accomplish.

Whether you already lead a Local Conversation or are thinking about starting one, you will leave with ideas, encouragement, and proof that this movement grows through intentional community building and local heroes.

Cities continue to pass transformational middle housing legislation at the state and local level, only to watch reform fail further downstream. The permits stall, the builders hesitate, and the lots sit unchanged. The gap between what is newly allowed and what actually gets built is where the real work begins.

This session draws on mddl's experience working across more than a dozen Canadian and American cities to examine what moves the needle. Building a culture of middle housing delivery requires foundational education and knowledge across three interconnected areas: the policy environment, the builder ecosystem, and the tools and processes that make implementation possible. Participants will work through a real site and explore the tools that enable delivery, leaving with a hands-on understanding of what implementation could like on the ground.

Join Transportation for America's Beth Osborne for a conversation with Founder and President of Strong Towns Chuck Marohn for a conversation about Strong Towns' recent white paper Mission Accomplished. Federal transportation policy can be a threat to building Strong Towns, and this conversation will draw on decades of experience to highlight the consequences for communities of deferring to federal investment — and how thinking and acting at the local level can offer a different vision.

Eliminating parking minimums is a win — but it's just the beginning. The real opportunity lies in what you do next.

The curb is some of the most valuable real estate in your city, and in most places it's being given away for free. Poorly managed parking doesn't just waste space, it fuels political backlash against reform, creates hurdles for safer streets, and leaves money on the table that could be invested directly in your neighborhood. The good news: curb management is available to any city, whether you've eliminated mandates entirely or are just getting started.

We'll be covering everything from the political case for active management, to real-world implementation, to what's possible when cities and advocates start treating the curb as public space rather than private property.

For decades, we’ve been building what Strong Towns calls “gray fields": aging shopping centers and office parks surrounded by oceans of concrete or asphalt. Too much parking. Too little productivity. Single-use retail in a market that has already moved on. From 30,000 feet, the solution looks obvious: take the excess parking and put housing on it. Townhomes. Apartments. Mixed-use. Incremental density. Easy, right? If it were that simple, we’d have solved this everywhere by now.

In this session, Monte Anderson shares his "on-the-ground" experience converting overbuilt parking lots at Wheatland Plaza in Duncanville, Texas, into townhomes using a condominium ownership structure, a powerful but often misunderstood legal tool in Texas. What seems like a straightforward infill strategy quickly collides with the gray areas: platting asphalt that was never meant to be subdivided, separating utilities from shared infrastructure, navigating fire and building code interpretations, zoning that says “yes” but functions like “no,” perceived parking panic versus actual math, financing projects lenders don’t recognize, and selling pieces of a shopping center to individual homeowners.

If we’re serious about turning liabilities into productive places, we have to learn how to work through these gray areas: legal, financial, political, and psychological. Done right, gray fields can become real neighborhood fabric again. And yes, it’s possible to make money and do good at the same time.

Where did the corner grocery store go? Why are there no food trucks in my town? Why can’t I start a business from my house? It’s (regulatorily) complicated.

You shouldn’t need a law degree to start the business of your dreams. But in many towns and cities, starting something as simple as a neighborhood storefront or a coffee shop is a process entangled in complex zoning requirements, confusing paperwork, and thousands of dollars in permit fees before you can even open your doors. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Join us to learn how to rectify common regulatory barriers that block the small businesses that make neighborhoods vibrant and resilient. Drawing from national research from the Institute for Justice’s Cities Work initiative and pulling from entrepreneur insights, you will learn strategic reforms to make your town more small business friendly.

Many of us want to build stronger neighborhoods but struggle to connect with people whose experiences, priorities, or perspectives are different from our own.

In this workshop, Mary Kate Norton draws on her background in community organizing and her work with Strong Towns Local Conversations to explore how stories reveal overlapping experiences and values across lines of difference. Together, we’ll dive into how meaningful relationships often begin with small, intentional conversations. The session will explore how organizers sometimes need to change their rhythms, locations, or language to meet neighbors where they are - and why that effort is worth it. Participants will leave inspired to sit down for coffee with a neighbor, listen to their experiences, and discover the shared stories that can move a community forward.

In the battle for stronger towns, we all come up against some common counter arguments: “But people like driving.” “Residents don’t want to have to park two blocks away from their destination.” “The suburbs exist because everyone prefers to live that way.” How do you fight back against those arguments? With math. Joe Minicozzi, founder of Urban3 will walk through the math behind endless highways, subdivisions, and big box stores, and why it doesn’t pencil out. Then he’ll talk through how to use that math in your discussions with local leaders to advocate for stronger towns.

The decades long overnight success story of a neighborhood revitalized the Strong Towns way.

In the early 1800’s what is now Pettaway was originally an Indian Reservation. Later it was used as a Civil War Outpost before becoming a neighborhood to the growing Downtown Little Rock. Known for its racial and economic diversity during a time when such things were unheard of, Pettaway experienced many of the same struggles most downtown neighborhoods experienced post-World War II. Urban Sprawl and White Flight emptied the neighborhoods leaving only those who couldn’t afford to sell for a loss. Then came gang violence and a tornado in the late 90’s. Since then, there has been a quiet, slow revitalization with partners including The University of Arkansas, a non-profit CDC for affordable housing, the city of Little Rock followed by dozens of for-profit infill developers. Over a hundred homes and 20 new businesses later, this is the story of Pettaway.

This talk will explore how the five campaigns of Strong Towns align with some of our biggest environmental challenges. For example, transportation and residential energy use account for over 50% of U.S. energy consumption. Making these systems work efficiently and productively is key to solving many environmental challenges. Financial responsibility leads to environmental sustainability, which makes the campaign for transparent local accounting a move in the right direction for living within our means. Both movements have a shared value for using our resources wisely and productively.

We will also look at why Strong Towns messaging is more inviting, inclusive, relatable, and empowering than common approaches to environmental messaging. Ultimately, both movements are committed to creating healthy places where people can thrive. Strong Towns is particularly adept at bringing large systemic issues to our front door, where we can find meaningful local action that impacts our day-to-day lives. We need to apply this approach to solving more of our big problems, along with a renewed approach to stewardship of our places.

Many cities rely on budgeting practices that focus primarily on what must be paid this year, while making little provision for the costs that will come due in five, ten, or twenty years. Roads and other infrastructure are often treated as assets on paper, even as long-term maintenance obligations quietly accumulate. To make matters more challenging, municipal financial documents are frequently so opaque that even experienced government staff, let alone residents, struggle to understand the full picture.

The Strong Towns Finance Decoder was created to help communities uncover that bigger story. Using a city’s own public financial data, the tool visualizes key indicators over time, providing a clear-eyed view of a community’s actual financial condition and current trajectory.

In this session, you’ll learn how the Finance Decoder works and how communities are beginning to use it to better understand where they stand. You’ll walk away better equipped to examine your local finances through a Strong Towns lens and to ask a more important question: not just “Can we fund this?” but “How far behind are we, and what can we do now to strengthen our financial footing so we can provide the services we expect for generations to come?”