Daniel Herriges (Twitter: @DanielStrTowns) serves as Content Manager for Strong Towns, and has been a regular contributor since 2015. He is also a founding member of the organization. Daniel has a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Minnesota. His obsession with maps began before he could read. His budding environmentalism can be traced back to age 4, when he yelled at his parents for stepping on weeds growing in sidewalk cracks. His love of great urban design and human-scaled, livable places has also been lifelong. Daniel has a B.A. from Stanford University in Human Biology with a concentration in Conservation and Sustainable Development. After college, he worked as an environmental activist for several years, in support of indigenous people's rights and conservation in the Amazon rainforest. He can often be found hiking or cycling. Daniel is from St. Paul, Minnesota.
Walkability and the culture wars
By Daniel Herriges, Strong Towns
Even if you do take this study's results at face value, it's a stretch to interpret its major takeaway as, "Most Americans don't want walkable places."
Is This the Future of Civic Engagement?
By Daniel Herriges, Strong Towns
Gordon says that there are no shortcuts around the amount of work involved in this model of community engagement. “You’re building relationships, building trust.”
We Don’t Live in a World of Cartoon Villains
By Daniel Herriges, Strong Towns
There are people at every part of that spectrum who care about building local resilience. The Strong Towns approach is radical, but not in a way that fits into ideologues' narrative boxes.
We Used to Just Call These “Houses”
By Daniel Herriges, Strong Towns
We have a way in the modern world of rediscovering things that humans have always done but branding them as something trendy and a little alien. So it goes with the explosion of interest in "tiny houses" as an answer to what ails cities struggling to house and attract people. The ironic thing about tiny houses is that they're nothing new; it's just that, in surprisingly recent memory, our culture had a different name for them. We called them "houses."
Seeing your Community with New Eyes through a “Walking Audit”
By Daniel Herriges, Strong Towns
There’s no better way to understand the place you live than to simply get outside and walk its streets. You see how your neighbors go about their needs, how they interact with each other, and where they face difficulties in negotiating the environment.
What’s Missing from the Green New Deal
By Daniel Herriges, Strong Towns
But the Green New Deal has a big blind spot: It doesn’t address the places Americans live. And our physical geography—where we sleep, work, shop, worship, and send our kids to play, and how we move between those places—is more foundational to a green, fair future than just about anything else.
Progress in an Uncertain World
By Daniel Herriges, Strong Towns
Strong Towns vision is heavy on experimentation and small-scale risk-taking (with potentially great rewards). It is heavy on civic engagement and grassroots action. And it is notably light on technocratic policy interventions: to the extent we talk about policy, it's often about what policy makers should NOT do, not what they should.