Resources & Tools
Explore our favorite resources and tools to help you take action. Even the littlest action moves Chicago toward being a stronger place for us all.
Strong Towns Chicago Guides
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On June 25th, 2025, Strong Towns Chicago and the Chicago Growth Project organized a writer's workshop that focused on writing op eds to support strong urbanism, housing affordability, and transit.
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On September 17th, 2025, Strong Towns Chicago held a crash course workshop on public data. The workshop walked through a real-world example and explained how to write a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) request to hold your lawmakers accountable.
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On October 20th 2025, Strong Towns Chicago and 350 Chicago held a workshop on contacting local officials. The workshop taught participants how to make engaging email templates, strategic call scripts, and post cards and how to improve their persuasive writing skills to make their voice heard.
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On September 27th, 2025, Strong Towns Chicago hosted the first ever Strong Towns Illinois (“STILL”) Regional Gathering.
Members from Local Conversations across Illinois—including ST Blono, (CU)urbanism Club, ST Batavia, ST Elmhurst, and ST Elgin—gathered to exchange tips, best practices, and ideas for advocating effectively to make our places stronger.
View the presentation to see key insights, strategies, and actionable ideas shared by Local Conversation members from across Illinois.
Chicago-Specific Tools and Resources
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Chicago Councilmatic is website that tracks all things related to the Chicago City Council (legislation, meetings, commitees, and alders).
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Strong Towns Chicago:
Independent Reports:
Independent Blogs:
History:
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National Strong Towns Resources
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Strong Towns Website - Our places are struggling. The response is local. Join the movement that’s taking action.
Strong Towns Action Lab - One-stop shop providing you with the resources you need to take action in your community.
Strong Towns Housing-Ready Toolkits - Three toolkits for Building a Housing-Ready City:
(1) Six Policies That Will Make Your Town Housing Ready
(2) How Cities Can Grow an Ecosystem of Incremental Developers
(3) Financing the Housing-Ready City
Strong Towns Finance Decoder - Years of budgeting, clarified in an afternoon: input a handful of your city's publicly-available financial numbers and automatically produce 7 indicator charts to visualize the financial trajectory of your place.
Strong Towns Crash Analysis Studio - Responsible cities analyze traffic crashes to save lives. Yours can too.
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The Strong Towns Podcast - Explores how we can financially strengthen our cities, towns, and neighborhoods and, in the process, make them better places to live.
Upzoned - In depth discussions about one big story from the week in the Strong Towns conversation, right when you want it: now.
The Bottom-Up Revolution - Stories from the grassroots, each episode features a Strong Towns advocate who is making positive change in their community.
Stacked Against Us - A series exploring how a national economic gamble broke housing, and why local resilience is the only way forward.
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