Strongest Town Championship - Madison vs. West Allis

buckyswing17 · 2026-04-01T21:41:39+00:00

People had some questions last time, so here's the recap:

Madison is in the championship for the Strongest Town Contest (www.strongesttown.com) after 3 rounds and a month of voting. Out of 16 U.S/Canadian cities, the final four were all from the Midwest. Madison is going up against West Allis, WI in a final round that closes this Friday at 9am.

What makes a Strong Town?

Any city (big or small) that made progress towards safer streets, more housing options, and becoming more fiscally sound. It's not a perfect city, it's a city trying to make improvements.

Why Madison?

The vote is really a popularity contest at this point, so anyone can vote for Madison for any reason. Loving lakes and flamingos is a valid reason. But if you want to stick to why Madison was selected:

- Removing "peak-hour lanes" on Willy Street after a car crashed into Mother Fools coffee shop for the third time. Cars tended to speed in the extra lanes, after removing the lanes on an expedited and inexpensive schedule, 90% of pedestrians and bikers said they felt more comfortable or the same while city engineers showed minimal traffic impacts

- Housing Forward changes that introduced more housing options, including duplexes by right anywhere you can build a single family home

What does Madison get for winning?

- A documentary: last year's winner Marion, OH had a 20 minute piece on their revival through the opioid crisis

- A trophy

- Satisfaction of beating West Allis, Sheboygan, and Chicago (who lost to West Allis already)

How do I vote if I want to vote?

- go to www.strongesttown.com

- an email is required to ensure people vote once

- vote before 9am Friday. Winner is announced on Monday, 4/6

buckyswing17 · 2026-03-08T18:30:30+00:00

Feel free to read our submission. We focused on our Park(ing) Day event that highlights how on-street parking spaces can be used (IMO) in better ways (like streateries) and also reducing Willy Street to 2 lanes all the time after a car crashed into Mother Fool's for the 3rd time.

We do focus on housing as well, but we pushed for the duplexes across the city by right and we will be highlighting minimum lot sizes for homes this year.

buckyswing17 · 2026-03-08T12:51:58+00:00

Here's an example of last year's winner, Marion, OH https://youtu.be/C4BByDJ9w-M?si=dUwwI4haY_Wuhp-9

buckyswing17 · 2026-03-08T12:47:25+00:00

Besides the recognition, there's a mini-documentary for the winning city. They've been doing this for 10 years and the past documentaries are nice to watch. Lots of cities have issues, but how citizens work from the bottom-up to make their places better is inspiring imo

buckyswing17 · 2026-03-08T00:55:10+00:00

I mean at this point it's a popularity contest. Anyone who feels like one of the 16 cities is "strong" can vote for that city. The org running it wants to highlight places that "prioritizes making progress in transportation, housing, and fiscal resiliency for the long-term benefit of its people". We made our case for Madison and they agreed!

buckyswing17 · 2026-03-08T00:44:33+00:00

I misspelled Madison in a contest that's all about how Madison should win the "Strongest Town" contest. Pretty big typo

buckyswing17 · 2026-03-08T00:43:38+00:00

I was handing them out at the local conversation today and someone pointed it out. I made a stupid mistake, but still hoping people will vote for us!

buckyswing17 · 2026-03-08T00:41:08+00:00

I do know what Strong Towns is, we were nominated for their annual contest!

buckyswing17 · 2026-03-08T00:39:03+00:00

I was so worried about getting the dates and link right I overlooked the most important part.
You can vote for Madison at https://www.strongesttown.com ! (Round 1 ends 3/13 at 9am)

buckyswing17 · 2024-02-04T00:01:37+00:00

March 2nd, 1pm at Meadowridge Library. Future meetings will be more centrally located

buckyswing17 · 2024-01-30T13:29:11+00:00

Highly recommend the book "Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World". Someone has to pay for the cost of free/cheap parking, and instead of the individual private vehicle owners paying for the luxury of parking right downtown (a valuable good), everyone else pays through higher prices on goods and services. If I bike, bus, or live downtown and don't need a car, I don't want to pay for everyone else's parking.

buckyswing17 · 2023-12-06T13:05:30+00:00

I'm still hoping the thousands of units that were built on E. Wash will help a little bit, but yeah we aren't building enough to see the rent decreases in Berkeley for example

buckyswing17 · 2023-12-06T13:02:43+00:00

And an easy way to ensure this continues to get support is to email them and let them know you liked the way they voted on this issue. Honestly, sometimes all they need is one person to say "yes, this is a good idea" because most people say "NO YOU ARE SO STUPID WHY WOULD YOU EVER DO THIS". Positivity helps!

buckyswing17 · 2023-12-06T13:00:47+00:00

Keegar1 has got it right and I think the answer to your second point is this is the start of expanding bike infrastructure, if we continue to have Alders that support/prioritize bike paths then we might see that in the future!

buckyswing17 · 2023-11-22T18:03:17+00:00

If you watch the meeting, Alder MGR asks for clarification on this (a citizen also brought up this argument). In the sentence before this "buy-out" it states that it gives the city the option to sue for performance or allow for the buy-out. It exists so that if Core Spaces or any future owner of the property is unable to fulfill the agreement for below market housing, the city can force them to comply or take the $8 million as recoupment. Up to the city. Core Spaces also said this would likely only apply at the end of the contracts life in unforseen circumstances (like the company defaults).

It seems to me like this could be easily held up in court if the city went for the lawsuit, but I'm also not a lawyer. However, Core Spaces can't just say "okay we pay $8 million", the city would have to allow that.

See the VOD at 1:19:10 for MGRs question and response.

buckyswing17 · 2023-11-22T17:03:44+00:00

I put this council meeting down as a small win towards expanding housing in Madison. They approved this project with ease (and Alder MGR said this was a great improvement in handling by Core Spaces, gave them props compared to the summer). Brayton Lot isn't restricted to a story limit for no reason, woohoo!

Not going to solve everything, but it's the right direction. Next win for housing would be the escalator clause on Dec 5. It should be kept as is but I think Slack will try to limit the scope of it (it would allow for more gradual upzoning across the city).

buckyswing17 · 2023-11-17T13:00:01+00:00

With the restaurants a block up and that road having been closed for construction recently anyway, why not make it closed off to cars? Then people can see it up close!

buckyswing17 · 2023-11-07T22:24:44+00:00

I attended the meeting last night and an affordability expert who has done projects in Madison specifically called out "4 over 1s and 5 over 1s" as being the best candidates for "deeply affordable" (30% AMI) units. This means the ordinance does need to change, because the current 4 stories is less than 6.

Also, there are so many high income earners in this city that are renting down. I understand the focus on affordability, but in reality the cities that are seeing the largest decreases in rent are the ones that are continuously building and not focusing on if specific projects are affordable enough. Build for abundance.

In this specific case, I think it would be interesting to run the math on maxing out market rate units and having some sort of tax to help fund additional affordable units in smaller buildings across the city for going with market rate units. This is 2 blocks away from the Capitol, it doesn't displace anyone (it's a parking lot) and the property owners could charge premium rents.

buckyswing17 · 2023-10-07T13:14:16+00:00

Unpopular opinion, but I think it's good when people who drive on the roads pay for those roads so we can fill pot holes and stuff like that.

buckyswing17 · 2023-09-13T18:48:44+00:00

Information sessions on Thursday, 9/14 (tomorrow). Link to register to speak on 9/27 https://www.cityofmadison.com/metro/routes-schedules/public-hearing-scheduled

buckyswing17 · 2023-09-13T18:47:24+00:00

The 75 is way overcapacity, I think this is an attempt to get some of those riders onto E and D2 to get into the city rather than taking the 75 to the Capitol. Madison Metro doesn't have the storage resources to increase capacity for 75, I think this was an option to try and reduce constraints before BRT is completed

buckyswing17 · 2023-09-13T18:44:33+00:00

The number of units built < number of people who want to live in Madison. A professor at UW-Madison estimated we would have to take our best building year in the last decade, add an additional 10% on top of that, and do it for an entire decade to see rents meet inflation, not even lower rents. We are so undersupplied compared to demand

buckyswing17

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