Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town

Confessions of a Recovering Engineer will be a logical 'Part 2' to Chuck's book Strong Towns. It builds on Strong Towns: Bottom-Up Revolution by focusing on the core transportation insights Marohn has developed in more than a decade of writing for Strong Towns. The article Confessions of a Recovering Engineer (November 2011) remains the most widely read and distributed piece ever published on the Strong Towns website.

In the past few years, we have seen an increase in public interest as it pertains to our local communities and improving upon them. Put simply, more and more people are beginning to care about their community and improving it. Confessions of a Recovering Engineer examines the one of the key elements of any community both large and small: the transportation system. It gives non-technical people (really, non-engineers, which will include planners and elected officials and members of the public) permission, along with the capacity, to question the accepted engineering practices that shape their city. Readers will get a better understanding as to why streets, roads, highways, etc. are designed in the manner they are, why transportation design is vital to a thriving community, and how they can be improved upon the better the communities they serve. It will highlight real examples of poor design and how it has had a negative impact on the community it serves as well as case-studies in which improvement has helped to revitalize said community.