I'm Chuck Marohn — founder and president of Strong Towns, a nonprofit movement working to rebuild the way cities grow. With a background in civil engineering and urban planning, I spent years working on development projects before realizing that the standard approach was actively making communities weaker, not stronger.

That realization led me to write several books — including the bestselling Escaping the Housing Trap — and to build Strong Towns into a national movement of over 6,500 members. Planetizen has named me one of the 15 Most Influential Urbanists of all time, and I continue to advocate for a bottom-up approach to building places that actually work.