Why I couldn't nominate Harrisonburg for the Strongest Town Contest
And why I'm hopeful that the Friendly City might be competitive next year
I had every intention of nominating Harrisonburg for the Strongest Town Contest this past weekend. Strong Towns puts on an annual contest to recognize cities and towns across the country that are implementing reforms based on a specific set of principles that make communities financially stable, safe, and inviting. Nominations are vetted and narrowed down to 16 finalists.
, the founder and president of Strong Towns, visited Harrisonburg last spring and spoke about incremental development and his book, Escaping the Housing Trap.16 towns are grouped into 4 segments of 4, with a theme for each group such as Best Progress Toward Building Safer Streets, Best Public Engagement Processes, etc. Everyone gets to vote for the best town in each segment, basing their votes on information from that town’s application.
How cool would it be if Harrisonburg competed in the Strongest Town Contest a year after that event sponsored by the local Strong Towns affiliated group, Livable Harrisonburg? I sat down to start filling out the nomination form and was stumped by the very first question:
What are people in your city doing to build streets that prioritize people and merely accommodate automobiles — not the other way around?
Harrisonburg has made many positive changes over the past few decades to accommodate people walking and riding bikes. The Northend Greenway, Friendly City Trail, and Bluestone Trail are wonderful recreational amenities. But the trails do not (yet) connect a enough common destinations that make them useful for a critical mass of commuters and errand-runners.
The city also has many sidewalks, but sidewalks mere inches away from speeding SUVs make the experience unpleasant enough that few people would choose to walk if they had the option to drive. We tend to think of walking or biking instead of driving as a choice, but for many residents who can’t afford a car, walking in Harrisonburg is just an unpleasant (and often unsafe) necessity.
Harrisonburg scores a 45 out of 100 on walkscore.com, which classifies us as a car-dependent city. The recent lane reconfigurations and neighborhood traffic calming program are steps in the right direction, but I wouldn’t say it “prioritizes people and merely accommodates automobiles.” Cars still utterly dominate those spaces. No streets downtown have been pedestrianized like they have been in Staunton.
The good news is that even without a significant influx of additional funding, Harrisonburg could improve our walkability by doing several things:
Pedestrianize select streets downtown at certain days and times during the spring and summer and allow outdoor dining in those locations
Implement physical traffic calming measures like raised crosswalks in every residential neighborhood (without making residents jump through hoops) when it comes time to mill and resurface those streets
Partner with the Arts Council and city schools to install street art at select intersections with a focus on slowing car traffic (this would also require coordinating with Public Works)
Experiment with more quick build treatments at dangerous intersections across the city to quickly improve safety for all road users
What policies and approaches are people in your city using to decrease or eliminate parking minimum mandates and encourage development that is more productive than parking lots?
I’m a broken record on the repeal of off-street parking minimums. One of the many articles I’ve written about local parking policy was even republished on the Strong Towns website. In Harrisonburg Planning Commission meetings I vote for variances (special permission requested by applicants), special use permits, and rezonings to allow fewer parking spaces every chance I get.
But none of that changes the fact that Harrisonburg still requires developers to build a minimum number of car parking spaces for practically every type of new development or redevelopment. Requiring limited, valuable land to be prioritized for car storage is the crux of the housing crisis. Parking lots don’t bring in tax revenue sufficient to cover the costs of infrastructure and maintenance the city provides to them. Unless or until we change our zoning and subdivision ordinances to prioritize housing for people over temporary car storage, we are not what I would consider a strong town.
What are people in your town doing to promote the incremental and bottom-up development of more housing options and greater housing flexibility?
Harrisonburg currently has zoning rules that prevent incremental small-scale development. For example, we score a zero in HousingForward Virginia’s ADU playbook. Again, this relates back to the Zoning and Subdivision Ordinances Update Project, which has been stalled out for years. I’ve been on the Ordinance Advisory Committee (OAC) since 2020 and the last time we met was April of last year.
Tell us a little about the progress people are making to more fully account for the cost of your city’s infrastructure over the long term … What are people in your city doing to shift focus toward maintaining your existing infrastructure instead of just building more roads?
Virginia’s annexation moratorium serves as a backstop to prevent our municipal boundaries from sprawling outward, but that’s true of all 38 of Virginia’s independent cities. And that limitation is all the more reason to make better use of the limited land that we have. As for our fiscal health, the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development classified Harrisonburg as “a locality in high fiscal stress.”
In 2023 I invited geoaccounting analyst Joshua McCarty to give a presentation to the Harrisonburg Planning Commission about how we can improve our land use policies. McCarty’s analysis of Harrisonburg showed a clear spike in land value in the downtown central business district (CBD) where the zoning is mixed-use by-right (buildings can be business, residential, or both) and there are no off-street parking requirements.
Harrisonburg should revise our zoning ordinance to allow more mixed-use development by-right in more areas of the city, not just in the downtown CBD. This would allow for maximum flexibility and adaptive re-use of buildings, and increase tax revenue to help maintain and upgrade the existing infrastructure that serves these neighborhoods.
A good first step in this direction would be for the city to post an RFP for a thorough geoaccounting analysis that takes into account not only land value per acre (as shown above) but also includes infrastructure maintenance costs and obligations so that we can see which neighborhoods are paying enough revenue to cover the cost of maintaining the public infrastructure (roads, storm drains, sewer) that the city provides. These sorts of analyses often reveal that older, lower-income neighborhoods are paying more than their fare share of taxes, while wealthier low-density housing developments end up being a net negative.
In spite of all this, I remain hopeful that we will get some forward movement on the zoning and subdivision ordinances update sooner rather than later. If we can address parking mandates, mixed-use development, and by-right incremental housing in that rewrite of our zoning laws in 2025, Harrisonburg could be a good candidate for America’s Strongest Town next year.
Of course, the ultimate goal here is not about winning an online contest. This is about allowing our city to evolve and adapt (as it was able to do in the past) so that Harrisonburg can become financially resilient, affordable to residents, and car ownership is not a requirement to have a decent standard of living. The changes I’m advocating for here are relatively small steps that can get us moving in the right direction to become a strong town for decades to come.
I think I tend to see things in a more optimistic (naïve?) way—I don't think any city has the perfect answer to all of the questions and asked in the nomination form and I see any progress as better than none. Harrisonburg may not currently be at its peak, but I see no reason not to strive for it or to feel defeated. That said, I certainly do appreciate your perspective and your view as someone who is actively involved in the work of improving all of these things. You have a vantage point that I frankly do not. You see the city for all of its flaws and it would be somewhat irresponsible not to at least consider them. I have a few more thoughts I'll share on the response/counterpoint post, but in general I am just glad we are having these conversations.