"Strong Towns" is a 501(3) non profit, headquartered in Brainerd, Minnesota
Strong Towns is an American non-profit 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 and seeks to improve communities through urban planning concepts such as walkability, mixed-use zoning, and infill development.[3] Strong Towns seeks to end American parking mandates[4] and highway expansion[1] and to reduce the country's car dependency.[1]
The organization was founded by Charles Marohn,[1] a former professional engineer, and is headquartered in Brainerd, Minnesota.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_Towns
About "Smart Towns" listed founder Charles Marohn:
Charles Marohn (born c. 1973) is an American author, land-use planner, municipal engineer, and the founder and president of Strong Towns, an organization which advocates for the development of dense towns and the restructuring of suburbia.[1][2][3][4][5]
Early life and education
Charles L. Marohn Jr grew up in Baxter, Minnesota on a small farm.[6][7]
He graduated from Brainerd High School in 1991. Marohn received a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Minnesota.[1] In 2000 he became a licensed professional engineer (PE) in the state of Minnesota.
He has since[when?] faced scrutiny by the state licensing board after an engineer from South Dakota reported Marohn for failing to renew his license in the mandated time frame, yet still calling himself a PE. Marohn admits to missing the license renewal deadline but acted quickly upon being made aware of the situation and addressed the oversight. Marohn viewed this action as a limitation upon his first amendment rights because of his critical statements made about the practices of traffic engineering, as well as his disapproval of civil engineers who he views as doing little to protect human life on roads.[8][needs update]
Strong Towns
Marohn started Strong Towns as a blog in 2008.[6] He was frustrated with projects he was working on which he believed were actively harming the places they were supposed to help.[6][2] As he gained many readers, he realized there was a need for an organization that advocated the principles he espoused. Strong Towns became a non-profit organization to "support a model of growth that allows America’s towns to become financially strong and resilient".[9]
Marohn believes that post World War II suburban development has been a failure, due to it being inherently economically unsustainable. He posits that low-density communities do not produce the tax revenue necessary to cover either their current services or the long-term costs of maintaining and replacing their services, and that suburbs are very difficult to adapt to an efficient, dense model because they were built as fully developed places.[7]
In 2011, he coined the word "stroad," a street/road hybrid, which has become popular among urbanists and planners.[10][11] According to Marohn, stroads are the "futon" of transportation alternatives. "Where a futon is an uncomfortable couch that also serves as an uncomfortable bed, a STROAD is an auto corridor that does not move cars efficiently while simultaneously providing little in the way of value capture."[7]
In late 2015, Marohn participated in a White House conference on rural placemaking.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Marohn
Whatever good ideas Smart Towns may well have, is alas undermined by their lack of credibility with regards to its dogmatic opposition to any major road infrastructure expansion whatsoever. They reflexively hate roads without stop signs or traffic lights, opposing any expansion of those existing, the creation of new ones, and are disappointing weak on offering mitigation.
No New Roads
We understand the problem of highway expansion. We have seen its impact firsthand in cities and towns across North America. That is why Strong Towns has been advocating to end highway expansion for over a decade.
No new roads, and no expansion of existing roads, especially expressways/freeways constructed during the 1950s. Gets its facts wrong, overstating harms while ignoring benefits as well as creative design solutions that would address legitimate concerns of urban livability, including disregarding environmental and safety concerns.
Who and what is behind "Smart Towns"?
Accordingly:
Strong Towns is supported by an incredible number of people. Since the organization’s founding in 2008, its supporters have built a remarkable movement. Whether your support is through membership, hosting an event, partnering or sponsoring a project, foundational support, or anything else, we thank you.
In addition to our members and other supporters, we acknowledge the following as major contributors to the Strong Towns movement. Thousands of people across North America are working to make their cities safe, livable, and financially resilient. These supporting organizations have taken major steps to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to live a good life in a prospering place.
This above url lists three entities:
Blandin Foundation
Driehaus Foundation
Urban 3
Of these, the most apparent tie in with wall street and the notoriously anti road Jesuit Order is Driehaus Foundation founder Richard Herman Driehaus. Some excerpts from wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Driehaus#
Richard Herman Driehaus (/ˈdriːhaʊs/; July 28, 1942 – March 9, 2021)[1][2] was an American fund manager, businessman and philanthropist. He was the founder, chief investment officer, and chairman of Driehaus Capital Management LLC, based in Chicago.
The philanthropic activities of the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and the Charitable Trust are widely acknowledged in the fields of culture, arts, heritage protection, journalism and architecture, including the renowned global Driehaus Architecture Prize for new classical architecture.
In 2000, he was named in Barron's "All-Century" team of the 25 individuals who have been the most influential within the mutual fund industry over the past 100 years.[3] His firm had $13.2 billion in assets under management as of March 2021....
He is often credited as the father of momentum investing, as he popularized the strategy which calls for spotting stocks on prolonged upward trends.[4][5] This strategy reportedly delivered compound annual returns of 30% for Driehaus Capital Management in the 12 years after it was set up in the 1980s.[6
Driehaus was born in Chicago. He attended high school at St. Ignatius College Prep and received his undergraduate (1965) and master's (1970) degrees in business from DePaul University. He also received an honorary doctorate degree from DePaul in 2002.[7][8][9]
From 1968 through 1973, Driehaus developed research ideas for the institutional trading department at A.G. Becker & Co. In 1973, he became director of research for Mullaney, Wells & Co. In 1976, he became director of research and a money manager for Jesup & Lamont.[10] In 1979, he set up Driehaus Securities, a research broker that provided ideas to a select group of accounts, followed by Driehaus Securities LLC in 1980.[9][10]
He founded Driehaus Capital Management LLC in 1982 and until his death was the current chief investment officer and chairman.[9][10] He later founded Driehaus Mutual Funds in 1996, and Driehaus Capital Management (USVI) LLC in 1997.[9][11]
Driehaus explained that "the momentum investor has confidence that a stock that is high can head even higher. We rarely invest in stock because it's cheap and hope for a turnaround."[12]...
Awards
Driehaus was inducted as a laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State’s highest honor) by the Governor of Illinois in 2017.[25]
Philanthropy
Driehaus has given widely both individually and through the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and the Richard H. Driehaus Charitable Trust.[9] He contributed an equivalent of $92 million in 2000's dollars from 1984 until 1987 already;[26] and his foundations kept donating ever since.
Driehaus often pointed to his Roman Catholic roots as a guide to his philanthropic endeavors. Driehaus said, “You have to continue to learn your whole life, you have to be responsible for your own actions, and you have to give something back to society.”[27]
He has said that his original plan was to give away only $100 million during his lifetime, but believed that he will end up parting with more than twice that amount.[28][29]
Driehaus Architecture Prize
The Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture (short: Driehaus Architecture Prize) was established in 2003 and doubled to $200,000 in 2008. It is presented annually through the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture to honor a major contributor in the field of traditional and New Classical architecture.[9][30]
In his 2012 interview with architect and urbanist Michael Lykoudis, Driehaus gives his inspiration for establishing the prize: "I believe architecture should be of human scale, representational form, and individual expression that reflects a community's architectural heritage. There is a delight, proportion, and harmony in classical architecture that I wasn’t finding in the contemporary buildings coming up around me in Chicago."[31] The Driehaus Prize is often compared to the Pritzker Architecture Prize, which typically encourages modern design.[7][32]
“The prize [...] represents a partial counterbalance to the rejection of classical forms by elite architecture that prevailed for much of the last century,” notes James Panero, an American culture critic.[7] The Driehaus Prize is typically awarded around the same time, has similar terms, are both commemorated by a bronze award (the Pritzker is a medal and the Driehaus is a miniature Choragic Monument of Lysicrates), and, until 2008, both were the same monetary prize amount.[33]
The first recipient of the Driehaus Prize was Léon Krier, who helped lay the theoretical framework for New Urbanism and designed the Prince of Wales' model town of Poundbury in England.[7][33] The first American to win the prize was Allan Greenberg in 2006, who redesigned the interior of more than 30 rooms of the U.S. Department of State.[32] The award has been given to architects associated with postmodernism, such as Michael Graves (2012) and David M. Schwarz (2015).[citation needed]
- Richard H. Driehaus Museum
- Momentum investing
- New Classical architecture
- Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture
References
- Calacci, Carol. "The 14th Annual Driehaus Awards for Fashion Excellence Supports Emerging Chicago Designers", Second City Style, May 6, 2015; retrieved September 21, 2015.
Further Links
- Schwager, Jack D. "Richard Driehaus: The Art of Bottom-Up Investing." The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America's Top Traders. New York: HarperBusiness, 1994. 211-229. ISBN 0-88730-667-5
