Can American Cities Save Themselves? This One Thinks So. 

You know why i love strong towns so much? These videos always make me feel like a better place is always possible. These videos are uplifting compared to many urbanist channels doom and gloom. I want to thank you for the amazing content and for sharing the great stories of so many people.

For the record, we 100% support Mike Keen's socks and sandals.

I'm a resident of Indiana, not near South Bend, but familiar enough with the state and what municipal governments in this state are like. It's incredible to see a municipal government that's pursuing progress through densification and revitalization rather than through highways expansions and suburban sprawl. It'd be lovely if the Indiana state government would actually support efforts like these, however, if your development isn't car dependent, you're likely out of luck. Hopefully with time, the city I live in will also move in a similar direction, and we can add our voices to SB's.

A strong town isn't just one that is able to thrive while it is growing. It is one that is able to thrive even while in decline. Trying something different if one thing fails is better than trying the same thing and failing every single time.

Next step: Make it more walkable by removing unnecessary car traffic, and by planting trees along the roads.

I moved to South Bend because I believe in this cities ability to change. Mike Keen and Martin Mechtenberg have been instrumental in helping me cultivate new ideas I can make happen! I'm originally from Elkhart, but saw an opportunity to make a difference in SB, which can hopefully bring change to my hometown. I love that you guys came here! Thanks Strong Towns!

I would love to live in an area like this, where there is a strong community and people care about being involved with local government and improving the area in a people-over-profits way.

Developers who are set on improving community, we really need cities to cut back on sprawl to even make it possible.

It's inspiring to see property development treated with the same spirit of collaboration as my local music scene. As a child of Kalamazoo, I wish these small, hardy Midwestern cities all the best (yes, even those in Ohio).

I am a serial video essay/RU-vid watcher and can say hand on heart that this is some of the best produced stuff I watch. This should be shown in classrooms of how to create effective educational content.

More of this content please. I've followed ST for years and I'm sure this is the most inspirational piece of media you've produced. High quality, great stories, and practical. These people embody the ST philosophy and it is great to see.

You're killing the video production man. The FPV shots were a nice addition 👌

Born and raised in FW Indiana and it does me proud to see one of mine doing good and leading a charge. Get it y'all

I dont know how to explain this but we have the opposite problem in my town Stratford Ontario. Every patch of dirt is worth a million dollars so projects dont pencil no matter what we put there. Its getting to the point where only 1-2million dollar homes are the only thing we can build because theyre the only ones who can afford it. Young people are fleeing because theres nowhere affordable to live and our banks (5 national ones) dont want to take chances on projects that dont pencil, especially with these rates. I have a feeling our town is going to collapse under its on stress soon.

Okay, but here's one thing I didn't hear about: In my city a lot of former retail places in neighborhoods have been converted to homes because the property tax on homes is so much lower than it is on retail. I don't know how universal this is, but it seems like here we really have to rebalance the tax code in order to preserve walkable retail.

This video is so encouraging. My wife and I are community shopping. And we’re looking for just such a town, maybe not South Bend but somewhere also in the rust belt. It’s beginning: an American Renaissance in small towns, strong towns.

Being a South Bend/Mishawaka native, I never gave much thought to how great South Bend is, but in the past few years I've noticed how great downtown is and how lively the culture is, especially when contrasted with the stroads and car-centric hell of nearby Granger. Also, shoutout to The General! My brother is the manager and I used to be a barista there! The owners (JB, Pat, & Mike) are all super great people!

So excited to see South Bend on here! I have lived in northern Indiana my entire life and attended IUSB. South Bend isn't perfect by any means, but they are working hard with their neighboring cities: Mishawaka, Roseland, Notre Dame and others to make a better more walkable city. Thank you for highlighting it!

Love this positivity! Love strong towns so much, please keep making these powerful videos!

The relationship Notre dame has with the community and the money they put into it definitely helps. Colleges, especially one of its caliber always help with revitalization

This is incredible because just today I was researching youngstown's planning efforts as a way to inform my advocacy for the wonderful St. Clair-Superior neighborhood in Cleveland. Thank you so much for producing exactly the content I'm looking for

While I understand the focus on community action, I'm curious how Notre Dame plays into this narrative as it's clearly a nearby resource that most towns don't have. (also, TIL that Notre Dame and other associated schools aren't actually in South Bend, but rather in their own unincorporated enclave, which seems like a whole 'nother issue!) Oh, and sweet flag for South Bend!

South Bend has improved by leaps and bounds, and it is amazing to see, especially in how they talk about it in the video (collaboration, entrepreneurship, sharing the wealth). Compared to its county counterpart, St. Joseph County, it is a shining example of how a city should be investing in resident-led, incremental improvements to neighborhoods. It'd be great to see these two work better together to equitably uplift the lives of people in the entire metropolitan area.

You guys are way more positive than NJB. Ive honestly been really considering just emailing or reaching out to they mayor or just government people in my town to change the zoning code. We have a 4 lane stroad that would be sooooo much nicer if it was converted to 2 lanes and zoned for mixed use.

The stuff being done in South Bend reminds me of some of the revitalization stuff being done in my hometown of Shreveport, LA. Shreveport still has a long way to go and is not close to SB, but there are definitely lots of good people there doing good work. This video could be a good guide for developers in Shreveport to continue this revitalization. I hope the positive momentum continues and that Shreveport will see a rebirth in my lifetime.

I'm from Youngstown and I'm hoping to start finding ways to improve our city. This video has me very optimistic

This spits in the face of NJB's recent "North America isn't doing anything and can't be saved, everyone move to the UK" rant. I'm very appreciate of that.

Loving the storytelling skills on display here. Cinematic b-roll, high quality interview clips distilled down, quality lighting, layers of captured story and decompressed explainer clips. 😮 All for the good cause of spreading the wisdom of the Strong towns message 👏👏👏

Bit nostalgic, lived in Mishawaka for just under a year when I was 10. Although I there wasn't a lot to do in the suburbs, I still have fond memories of SB/Mishawaka/Elkhart and felt at home as much as a shy foreign kid could in a such a short time.

I love the idea of people reinvesting in the communities that are important to them. this is great

Wow, this is super inspiring! Keep going, Strong Towns! Reclaiming towns to be for people, not cars, one neighborhood at a time

I love your rust belt content. You should look into Detroit. It is highly on a comeback. Some big projects being done are the Joe Louis Greenway and major road streetscapes. There is still a long way to go before seeing media attention.

Everyone you spoke to is so optimistic and receptive. Really hopeful stuff.

South Bend has Norte Dame keeping it from not dying, a key competent for a lot of these mid-size/small rust belt cities is keeping the young people that come to study there.

I hope they can!!

They have their content and presentations on RU-vid! From a sheer startup perspective, it's awesome they have it there. I'm probably going to watch a few of them.

My concern is that South Bend will become unaffordable for its citizens. The predatory nature of the housing market quickly pushes residents out of their own communities because of rising values. As a resident of another small Indiana city, I have seen this happen firsthand. Poorer residents are getting pushed out of their neighborhoods by developers. It's extremely difficult to take legal action against these developers due to their sheer size and influence, and Indiana's anti-community development laws.

This is a really great, uplifting video. So brilliant to hear people working together to improve their cities and really show how proud they are of this work. It's really heart-warming. Thank you for sharing.

Killer video, this is so high quality

Thanks for this great video about my hometown! I'm proud of my little city and it's been great to see its renaissance.

Nice to see some positive urban changes in the U.S . Sometimes grassroots organisations can seem powerless for decades until sudden rapid change happens.

awesome video and story, cant wait for the next one!!

This is a nice new format! Much more specific and actionable! Nice work!

Y'all have such fantastic video production AND messaging. Incredible stuff, it's very much appreciated.

whoa, didn't expect to see the town i live in now on here. there's a really interesting art/music scene in town that's growing which is pretty exciting as someone who came from athens, ga which is known for those things. there need to be more apartments/multi-family housing that are not run by llcs based in chicago tho -_-

I like that strong towns is making high quality video content nowadays, amazing job guys.

What an inspiring story! I can see you put a lot of effort into this video and the result of it is amazing!

Cleveland tryna become a “15 minute city”. LONG way to go comin from a lifelong resident (actual Cleveland, not da surrounding metro), but good to see progress from other cities too

I love this attitude, I really want to make a better community too. Thank you!

Dang this is just what I need, a path forward and some hope ❤

Great video. Thank you for the work you do 🙏

I can't say I'm really comfortable with how much this depends on the goodwill of private businesses and entrepreneurs. It kind of looks like gentrification to me. Where are the renters? Where are the working class people? It's mostly people with capital and education to undertake these kinds of projects. If property values go up, what will happen to those who weren't able to get in on buying homes when things were cheap? What will prevent South Bend from become a gentrified enclave? Maybe I'm seeing this all wrong, but it feels kind of top-down from monied players. I know you briefly mentioned the importance of making sure existing people don't get left out, but you didn't really outline how that may be achieved. Would these plans also come with zoning changes in the rest of the city so that Downtown, the most productive place, isn't completely subsidizing leafy green neighborhoods surrounding it that don't feel inclined to take on any change? I don't like being so suspicious, but this looks and sounds so much like what I've been hearing about development for the last 20 odd years that has never led to growth or revitalization that included working class and poor people. The only major update has been updated assessments of productivity per acre which highlights which parts of town are genuinely productive.

Minute 17 is where the gold of these interviews starts. Great job taking apart a very complex problem.

This was such a great video and nice change of pace to all the negativity that often surrounds Urban Planning content especially in the US. Thank you for creating these kinds of videos

Good on those people that realized that giant companies will not help them, and started changing their neighborhood not because it has a good ROI but because it will make the place where they live better. It is dumb that this realization escapes quite few people.

Honestly nothing makes me more proud of a town and its people than seeing how its people raised their city instead of leaving it.

I hope Canton, NC can see this and figure out how to remake their city. Its a beautiful small town that's always been centered around a paper mill that just closed a few weeks ago, costing around 25% of the local jobs.

Great video! Great community

Excellent example - thanks

These videos are so good, I really enjoy watching these 👍

This film was beautiful. Thankyou.

I live in South Bend, and I would say we feel like we are sinking as a city. We used to have our own mall, we used to make car's. We got neither today. Businesses are slow. I mean I started working a job in 2005 and here 18 years later it's just so much slower. Things feel worse here.

Chico CA is an interesting example. It’s one of the few cities in CA that sense moderately committed to sustainable growth. Especially since this city is in the Central Valley, makes it a real anomaly

As a European myself I *could* just shake my head, and resignate from all the bad decisions that were made in the past in the USA. It is one tiny piece of the mosaic that creates the whole picture leading to divisiveness and the frailty of a society which is susceptible to demagogues and radicals. But then again, I want to help people, no matter where they are from, what their skin color is (that shouldn't matter anyway), so I need info about what has been done in the past, what sounds like a reasonable approach to turn lost neighborhoods around, and maybe inject a few ideas myself. That's why I watch these kinds of videos, and compare what I see in them (hopefully honestly represented) to what I see in my neighborhood in Germany. I do hope that not only singular lots are improved, but a concept for future public transport, with maybe trams/streetcars/overhead electric buses is included as well. With the normal zoning laws of single use lots a vibrant neighborhood, walkable and friendly with a true sense of community, is difficult to implement. Multi-use lots, with small stores and shops on the ground floor, apartments on the second to third floors, and maybe a few offices or doctors practices above that, is the way to go. In addition to that small squares and plazas, with grass and plants, not really a park, but a small oasis of green, maybe a small pond or creek, does wonders for the livability of a neighborhood. I see them here in Hamburg, Germany everywhere, and they work. If I would start to list all the amenities, shops, doctors, pharmacies, bakeries, etc that I have within a 5 minute walk from my front door, this parapgraph would expand significantly. I wish all communities in the USA a healthy, strong, friendly neighborhood with a sense of being connected to each other again. Where you not only know the neighbors by their faces, but their history, their lives, and families. Greetz from a German in Hamurg, Germany.

One thing that is needed is a tax structure that discourages house flippers and works to keep people in their homes.

I spent time in South Bend during law school, and I loved it. So glad to see this work happening to bring additional vitality to the community. Now it's time for me to apply this in my new home, which is another rust belt town.

Mike Keen, inventor of Keens

I love this movement! So good to see in the States finally, after seeing some wonderful towns in Europe.

Something you should consider is that some of the new apartments that exist in downtown are aimed at people making 120 grand a year. The median income in South Bend is about 45 grand a year. You're looking at this from a very narrow lense and only talking to people who speak for the monied interest. Talk to people who live on the west side. No one is lending to them. There's no incentive for people making 45 thousand dollars a year to improve their neighborhood.

First post 😊. Loving this channel.

Most places are breaking down because, for several generations, people have been waiting for someone else to give them a job, rather than making jobs themselves.

I'm glad I've found your channel. Breath of fresh air. I'm a Somali-British and I'd love a lot of towns and small towns to be built/restored like this.

just wanted to say I really like those kind of videos where you interact with people of those communities (just like your first video on Lafayette parking). There is a lot of explainer video (notjustbikes, vox, alan the armchair urbanist...) it add something more to the youtube space. it is more concrete and less "just the opinion" of some group of people over the internet. By the way, I am looking forward to a video featuring people from Shreveport fighting highway expension :).

Things do change, we need to make sure the change goes in the right direction.

I'm all for building up cities. I live in a city that went from 80,000 people in the 60's to 35,000 today and see a lot of parallels between South Bend and my city. But I will always oppose giving $$$ to banks. A city directly funding co-ops and developments are far better than a city giving tax dollars to banks. It's privatizing profits and socializing losses.

Thank you for creating such an informative, important video. Strong Towns has the right idea. Creating vibrant, flourishing communities with an inviting, attractive town centre is crucial. Having the ability to walk, cycle or take public transit is requisite. Developing intimate spaces without ubiquitous automobiles completes the picture. A Dutchman who grew up in California, I now live in the fatherland--in Middelburg. I recommend visiting Dutch cities where one finds extraordinary magic in their city centres.

So many massive roads! :(

This is amazing video and true hope for other places

Issuing a correction, you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to" the heritage foundation

Great work!

Great video!

My brother used to go to the University of Notre Dame and when I was younger we would go visit as much as we can. My family loved the University and we would spend a lot of time in Mishawaka and Elkhart but never in South Bend because my parents called it "dead" and when we went Downtown about 15-10 years ago, it was exactly that. Nobody there with nothing to do. I'm very happy to see South Bend becoming a Strong Town and I'm looking forward to visiting again and truly exploring and experiencing South Bend the right way.

I really enjoyed the aerial photography skills!

The USA May not be perfect but As long as we live in the USA, it’s better to make the best of it.

What is encouraging is that this is not just happening in South Bend, but also in other rust belt cities. The absolute economic devastation that came to those cities following the collapse of various industries such as automotive and steel took decades to overcome. I live in the Greater Buffalo area. I've worked off and on downtown since 1995. It's amazing to see the transformation. Back in 1995 the first redevelopment of an old department store conversion to apartments happened. Most of the city continued to lose population and main street continued to look mostly dead the majority of the time. It took nearly another decade before other developers started taking other historic buildings and converting these abandoned spaces back into living spaces along with a place for small businesses. Ironically, the economic collapse of 2008 left remarkably little mark on the area. Our house values were never inflated and therefore people weren't loaded up "on mass" with unaffordable payments. Our industrial base had diversified into lots and lots of small and medium businesses. There weren't really many large companies that could collapse and leave another gaping hole in the economy. Certainly some businesses failed, but others grew as a result of opportunities. This city was mostly built by immigrants, and not surprisingly one major section was largely rescued by the arrival of a new group of immigrants. The Burmese refugees could really only afford to move int the faltering West Side. Those folks took terrible homes and slowly started to fix them up. Over a decade the momentum really swung into full recovery and that neighborhood has made a remarkable recovery. There are now constant redevelopment construction project throughout the city. There is a large mid-range apartment complex being built in an area that only 15 years ago was considered "not a great place to live." There is much more that needs to happen, but it is exciting to see the progress. f this slow but steady progress can continue, then there will be plenty of housing options, jobs and opportunities. Along with the progress is investment in making the city safer for pedestrians and cyclists. With 1 in 5 households owning no car, this means easier and safer access to jobs throughout the city.

South Bend Beerworks has great grilled cheese and South Bend is doing some cool stuff but I still hate Notre Dame

Thanks!

Amazing video! Never thought Indiana had places like this.

Oh hey! a Youngstown mention! 🙋‍♂

those before and after pictures are gorgeous

I didn't see any mention of gentrification. Could these improvements be pricing locals out or are there systems in place to ensure all classes benefit?

2 issues. Reliance on banks is never a good idea. You have to get state and federal funds if you want to build a city. Also the state of Indiana is a complete trash dump when it comes to politics and helping the general people that live in the state of Indiana. This is worse than a pipe dream because there is no way this is going to happen with how the state is govern.

" we can try to encourage banks to invest in these local projects"........ how about the state or federal government TELLS them they HAVE to invest in local projects, they are insured by the FED, they literally cannot fail and cant loose out in any venture they do, so make them do exactly what the people need them to do and regulate them so they cannot work with larger corporations for the same type of projects.

Turn those empty lots into more parks and gardens!!! Restore native habitat too!

can't have anything sustainable without better schools though

I am SO thankful that I have not seen any problems like this in western Canada! In 2003 I bought my 1000 sq ft condo for $230,000 CAD and today it is valued at $765,000 CAD ($575,000 USD).

I was just looking at prices of Airbnb rentals in South Bend and Youngstown as I would be interested in visiting. Crazy high. Same as everywhere I guess, but feel for people renting there. Got to get these new developments going.

I had family who had to go that way for work living there and I remember everything outside of the city area being littered with boarded up and rundown property. I also don't remember the city area being particularly large. It really came across as a small area was made nice for the wealthy and everyone else was left in squaller. That was quite a few years back and it does look like they made huge progress helping much more of the area since then. It's good to hear that things are working out for people there.

thank you!

Hopefully they do not neglect the investment in the infrastructure AND in their own people ... especially in education and re-skilling (both the young and old) as well.