It seems the institution of the local American city is troubled as of late. Suburban sprawl has covered the nation like barnacles on the bottom of a great ship, dotting the American landscape with unaffordable neighborhoods of McMansions and acres of parking lots. Citizens are more polarized than ever, and less willing to participate in their local community. Nationalized brands have gobbled up local businesses, leading to atrocities like Long John Silvers.

However, one nonprofit organization seeks to fix this problem.

Strong Towns was founded in 2008 by civil engineer Charles Marohn, with the goal of “[replacing] America’s post-war pattern of development, the Suburban Experiment, with a pattern of development that is financially strong and resilient.” They primarily provide resources for city governments, host events for city planners and government officials, and create media that informs the broader public on the issues of modern city design.

Strong Towns has rode the recent wave of urbanism and YIMBY-ism (Yes In My Backyard), boosted by popular internet personas such as Not Just Bikes and City Nerd. This movement, spurred by the affordable housing crisis, pushes for the rapid development of dense, walkable cities while advocating for less stringent building regulations and the downfall of NIMBY-ism (Not In My Backyard).

Every year since 2016, Strong Towns has hosted a nationwide contest to find the nation’s “strongest town,” one which follows through on basic Strong Towns principles. The elimination bracket sifts through 16 cities nominated by citizens and local governments, competing in categories such as street safety improvements, policies on affordable housing, and financial security.

And in 2021, Lockport took home gold. Surviving 4 elimination rounds, Lockport was voted the strongest town in the entire United States for its response to the pandemic, efforts to improve walkability and bikeability, and revitalization of its downtown. It’s certainly a commendable feat.

But does it still deserve this title?

It has been slightly under four years since Lockport was awarded this title, and much has changed since then. The pandemic has been officially over since 2023, a new president has been sworn in, and Strong Towns has since awarded the title of “strongest town” to three other cities. Seeing as how Strong Towns is in the midst of its 2025 Strongest Town competition, it’s a good time to reflect on the progress that has been made in Lockport since then. 

To gain some insight, I sat down with Lance Thies, Lockport’s Director of Community & Economic Development.

Thies is not only a member of the LTHS Board of Education, but a longtime landscape architect who worked on projects from resorts to streetscapes and downtown master plans. After living in Lockport for several years serving on the Lockport Planning and Zoning commission, he “took the leap” and applied for his current position when it opened up.

In Lockport, Thies oversees four divisions of the city’s Economic Development branch: Code Enforcement, Building, Planning, and, of course, Economic Development. The divisions are fairly self explanatory; The Code Enforcement division ensures that properties comply with building/zoning codes and municipal ordinances. The Building division approves home improvement projects and other developments. The Planning division assists prospective land developers in ultimately accomplishing their goals for a plot of land. And the Economic Development division simultaneously seeks out potential users for commercial, office, and industrial spaces while supporting existing businesses.

One day, he may be meeting with developers and interacting with business owners, and another day he might be helping a prospective retailer find a suitable piece of land and dealing with upset residents. As you may infer, it’s an extremely variable job.

With this broad perspective, I wanted to figure out two things: How has Strong Towns shaped Lockport’s approach to city planning, and how has Lockport continued to progress since its Strongest Town nomination in 2021 in terms of citizens, small businesses, and infrastructure?

Let’s start with Lockport’s approach to city planning.

The Strong Towns Approach

To really define what the Strong Towns approach is, we first need to identify what a “strong town” actually is. It’s a very broad term, but “a strong town is a community – and I always prefer the word community over city or village or something like that because it adds definition to just simply saying city. I would say that a strong town is a community of people who believe in the vision that has been set, or is continuously being set, that is resilient enough to withstand shocks to the system: The Great Recession, COVID, you know, any of those kinds of things. It educates their children, students, in a way that either brings them back to the community or extends that community’s values to other places wherever they ultimately end up. And it creates a variety of opportunities for people to find places to live, work, and play,” as described by Thies himself.

Many points of this definition touch on core Strong Towns (the organization) principles: primarily communities working towards a better future and fundamental resilience. Each city is unique, however, and prioritizes different aspects of a “strong town.” The official established vision for Lockport is “[respecting] our history while promoting and driving the development opportunities before us. Lockport facilitates community pride through collaborative civic connections, quality city services, and promoting a vibrant, diverse economy that is connected globally and based locally.”

It’s one thing to lay out a vision, but it’s another thing to actually follow through on it. Thies stated the largest impact the Strong Towns approach has had on the Lockport approach has been a greater consciousness when it comes to planning and implementation decisions.

“One of the things that we had talked a lot about as we were going through the Strong Towns process is, ‘What is the long-term cost of the infrastructure that we’re going to put into the ground as part of this development?’”

Thies brought up a specific example of this philosophy in practice: “There was a developer that was interested in kind of bringing [a development on the south side of town that had languished for years] into the city and kind of re-energizing the entire idea of developing it…Rather than just prognosticate about it or just kind of put our best assumptions out there, we wanted to say, ‘What’s a data-driven way to evaluate that?’ So we did a very comprehensive analysis of miles of pipe, miles of road, miles of all the different infrastructure pieces that would be developed by that. Then we created a revenue table about what are all the revenues that are going to be developed by this development…We could understand, are we creating a scenario where 60 years from now when all these streets seem to be redone and the pipes need to be redone and all that kind of stuff; Are we setting us up for a failure?”

This type of future-conscious thinking not only prevents local governments from falling into the “growth ponzi scheme,” but provides a basis for long term financial solvency that Strong Towns cites as a critical component of a “strong town.” It’s one of the ways Lockport has tangibly implemented Strong Towns principles into its planning decisions that ultimately support the city as a whole.

Walkability and Bikeability

The first major bullet point on Lockport’s Strongest Town page highlights the city’s efforts to improve walkability and bikeability. When asked about the city’s recent efforts to improve this aspect of Lockport, Thies pointed to a few policies and notable pieces of infrastructure:

• During the Strong Towns nomination, a ten foot bike path was installed along the Farrell Road frontage, running from East Division Street to 163rd Street. This path is especially critical as it runs along the LTHS property, where there is heavy foot traffic.
• Lockport now requires new developments to install sidewalks out in front of the property.
• Three additional miles of bike paths are soon to be installed primarily near new developments.
• The Veteran’s Memorial Trail, opened in 2022, connects from 159th Street and can take bikers as far as Orland Park, providing regional mobility. 

Thies also mentioned a fascinating vision for Lockport’s bikeability: The “Lockport Loop.”

“[It] takes people at Division Street, past the City of Lockport Treatment Plant, up to the Sanitary and Ship Canal wall right on the water edge, all the way north to the Chevron property…and then bring you back into town. So you can get all the way over to Lewis, connect all the way through downtown, travel on the I&M Canal for 62 miles in those directions, and then also be able to go up to the Sanitary and Ship Canal and see that.”

To achieve this vision, Lockport is working with IDOT to install bike paths on a future iteration of the 9th Street Bridge. We’ll discuss that later.

Housing Affordability

The recent housing affordability crisis has many young people concerned that they will never be able to own a home. The average sales price of houses spiked during the pandemic with no sign of returning to previous levels, and a 2023 Redfin Survey found that one in five Millennials and one in ten Gen Z’ers believe they will never own a home. One of Strong Towns’ primary focuses are to combat this crisis through “incremental housing,” which cuts regulations which prevent cities from evolving in response to local needs.

“There are a lot of competing interests,” Thies told me when asked about Lockport’s approach to housing affordability, “the example that I often times ask somebody is, ‘Will your parents buy you a brand new Lexus when you graduate from college?’ Probably not. So the question we have to ask ourselves is, is it an expectation that somebody graduating from college should buy a brand new house? Maybe not.”

Lockport’s approach emphasizes current housing stock, rather than focusing on building new housing stock. “The followup question is, ‘What availability do we have in our existing housing stock that may be able to leverage some of that?’ That doesn’t mean that we take our eye off the ball of new housing and what we can do to make new housing more affordable, but we also have to recognize exactly what we have already.”

When Lockport does build new housing, density is a key focus. “If you’ve got a piece of land and you can put 100 homes on it, or you could put 200 homes on it within the same piece of land, it’s likely that the 200 home development will cost less.” Strong Towns noted in their selection process some specific policies that play into this strategy: “In core downtown areas, single-family homes are able to house two units by right. Integrated into the fabric of downtown are multi-family structures next to single-family homes, all walkable to key downtown amenities. Lockport has focused on amending its zoning code to provide flexibility in residential development patterns, including action on lot sizes and allowing more residences in commercial zones.”

Thies also noted that he was anti-rent control, and a believer of the free market when it comes to housing. “It causes the price of other homes and other apartments to go up. It causes the cost of construction and the quality of construction to go down and the cost to go up further.”

“We have a lot of rentals that are in our old downtown that are old homes that have been broken up into four or five apartments. We have some duplexes that are in the old, repaired town. And then we have places like the Springs, Highland Ridge, and Redwood that are under construction or have been built that are new, whole places. If I said to Highland Ridge, ‘We’re capping your rent at X amount,’ what does that do to the house down here that has four units on it? Highland Ridge is going to say, ‘Well, if you’re going to cap my rent, you got to cap that guy’s rent.’ And how do I do that to 240 homes across the old part of town that have rentals in them, much less find all the 240 homes that have rentals in them?”

The data is generally against rent control. Some argue it is not a sole solution to housing affordability, but can be a useful tool for treating temporary displacement. But most economists say that rent control only helps current tenants and harms future tenants. A famous quote by Assar Lindbeck referenced by economists states that rent control is “the best way to destroy a city, other than bombing.” And Lockport currently does not want to test that concept.

Creating a Community

It’s well known that America has recently and increasingly become the nation of the isolated. In 2023, then US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy warned that loneliness had the same impact on health as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. Americans are spending far more time at home than ever before, despite the passing of the pandemic. Loneliness has noticeably bad consequences for your health, as the Surgeon General’s warning noted.

When I asked Thies about Lockport’s efforts to combat loneliness and build a stronger community, he mainly focused on the wide variety of events Lockport offers throughout the year that appeal to all demographics. The December cookie walk, movie showings at the Roxy theater, Canal Days, Touch-A-Truck, and community fairs were a few he named. He also cited LTHS as a great community hub for its own variety of events, such as football games, concerts, and even robotics events.

Speaking on these events, “you get to spend the time together to build those relationships, but also expand your network to other people that you would have never had the opportunity to meet had you not gone to that particular event.”

Small Businesses

Strong Towns posits that a key ingredient of a successful city is an abundance of small businesses. This does not go unsupported by the data – a report released by the US Small Business Administration found that small businesses drive 44 percent of US economic activity. Focusing on “many small bets” is a common ideology repeated in the organization’s messaging. 

In relation to how Lockport bolsters small businesses, Thies primarily pointed to a series of grant programs started during the pandemic. These included fire safety grants, covering half of the cost to retrofit small businesses with outdated or completely absent fire sprinkler and fire alarm systems, as well as facade grants, which covered the cost of improving the aesthetics of a building. In total, these grants provided $608,000 to local Lockport businesses over the past four years.

In addition to loosened restrictions on carry out dining during the pandemic, these actions helped buoy small businesses during a difficult time and improved the safety and attractiveness of Lockport.

But Lockport’s approach actually diverges a fair amount from the Strong Towns approach when it comes to larger businesses in local economies.

When I asked Thies about Lockport Square, a long-vacant lot covered by Strong Towns during Lockport’s nomination, he mentioned how big-box retailers can act as attractors for potential residents, as well as a source of revenue for government funding.

“If you asked 30 of your parents’ friends what they would like to have in Lockport, you’d probably hear a Target, a Home Depot, a Lowe’s, a Texas Roadhouse, an Olive Garden, a Cooper’s Hawk, any of those kinds of places.”

Strong Towns is staunchly against big box retailers. The organization argues that they syphon local revenue out of the community, are physically inflexible, and are overall a poor use of land space in terms of value per acre. But Thies’ views greatly differ from this philosophy. 

“That type of development that Strong Towns advocates for isn’t really the type of development that Target, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Cooper’s Hawk, any of those restaurants that our community really desires is going to attract. It makes it very difficult to attract those types of residents when you shrink the density down and you shrink the commercial spaces down to such a degree that they can’t attract the regional market that they need to survive.”

This is not to say that Thies nor Strong Towns is fully correct here; Rather, it’s an interesting perspective to consider how idealistic principles are laid out versus how they are practically applied and tested in the real world. 

Responses to Vehicle Crashes

Strong Towns firmly believes that individual drivers should not be blamed for a car crash; Instead, they believe failures in infrastructure are the primary cause of all car crashes.

While a seemingly radical idea on its face, it makes sense. Some, like the New York Times, consistently argue that distracting tech deserves the majority of the blame for car crashes. But that’s only because the infrastructure allows them to disengage from the task at hand. Simple and cheap changes to intersections can force drivers to pay attention to their surroundings, and innovations like the diverging diamond interchange can reduce conflict points.

So it was disappointing that Thies told me that crashes were “oftentimes… driver error.” 

To be fair, infrastructure changes are not as simple as they seem, especially in Lockport. Restrictions from existing buildings, a lack of control due to IDOT, and the vehicles themselves can all limit progress. “[The State Street/9th Street intersection] has probably been studied more than any other intersection on the plan from a geometric standpoint but it’s super tight. The 1890’s buildings that are on both corners of that weren’t designed at a time when there was a 65 foot semi truck trying to make a right turn on that side.”

Recently, Strong Towns has spearheaded an initiative to encourage cities to reduce vehicle crashes through “crash analysis studios.” They directly take inspiration from the rigorous analysis that goes behind airplane crashes – picking apart the mechanical or human errors that occurred in the events leading up to the crash – and the subsequent introduction of new regulations, standards, or infrastructure to mitigate future crashes. And this standard practice has made flying the safest method of transit, despite a few recent collisions and crashes.

It may seem overkill and even impossible to implement this strategy for a small suburban town, and in many ways it is. Pilots take years of training, while drivers only need a few months. City budgets are limited, so local governments may not be able to go in depth into determining the cause of a crash. But we have tried for years to combat distracted driving through PSA’s and lessons in driver’s education, and it simply hasn’t worked. Cities like Lockport should absolutely be considering “crash analysis studios” and similar programs to curb car crashes, and should seek to reframe the blame game into a search for infrastructure issues.

The Bridge

Many LTHS students, including myself, must cross the dreaded 9th Street Bridge every morning and afternoon to get to school. It’s a fact of life for those who live in Crest Hill – we simply must bear the constant traffic to live our lives. It’s a problem that has plagued both cities for years, and it shows no sign of improving.

Adding more lanes is simply not an option: Not only does adding more lanes actually increase demand, but Thies reminded me that “you always end up in a two-lane road at the light.” Thies did, however, suggest that a bridge built on Caton Farm Road would solve numerous issues, including congestion. Some groups have formed in the past advocating for such a solution from a purely personal vehicle perspective. However, Thies views it through the lens of industrial routes and clunky semi trucks. 

“We have 2,300 trucks a day that go through that 9th Street and State Street intersection. We have our traffic signals get taken out by semi-trucks. We get all the streetscape stuff get ripped out by semi-trucks trying to make the turns whether they’re making it from southbound state to go over the bridge, whether they’re making it on the left-bound to westbound or if they’re trying to make a right turn to go southbound state…Having a [Caton Farm Road bridge], especially if it was specific if we were able to transfer the class one truck route from this bridge to that bridge would bring all that semi-truck traffic to the south. And so it would protect our downtown a lot more than what we have today. All of the horns and the truck traffic and the air brakes and jake brakes and everything else that semi-trucks throw into our downtown currently would all be removed.”

This solution is currently off the table, as Will County “put a stop to that a number of years ago,” as Thies told me. But Lockport is currently working with IDOT to reroute the truck route currently cutting through downtown Lockport to a more northern route through 135th Street into Romeoville. “If that class one truck route was able to be relocated either to a new bridge or to 135th Street, that would relieve a lot of the congestion that we see currently on our bridge.”

Learning from Failures

In general, a good organization doesn’t just focus on the successes, but they analyze the failures and work to prevent them in the future.

This was certainly the case for Lockport in 2022, when the former Texaco refinery was considered as a possible site for a new quantum computing campus. This would have not only provided a purpose for the long-underutilized parcel of land, but would greatly bolster the local economy.

Despite hard efforts to win over PsiQuantum, the company who would have built the campus, it was ultimately decided the project would be built in Chicago. While disappointing, Lockport didn’t immediately write it off as a loss.

“It opened our eyes and the eyes of the development community to what that site could do, and so what we have tried to take out of that loss is, ‘how do we cast the site going forward?’ What’s the future of that site, and how do we best leverage whatever gets developed on that site to improve the rest of our community…That really helped us to try and focus on what we want to occur on that particular site.”

Cities and local governments will never be perfect. Mistakes will absolutely be made. But a city willing to acknowledge and learn from mistakes for the sake of citizens will always be better and more stable than a city who doesn’t want to take accountability.

“So it took a negative thing we worked super hard on to try and win. Ultimately we weren’t successful and we’ve converted that to the best of our ability into a positive that helps us advance it forward.”

…

After I interviewed Thies, he walked me down the stairs of the Lockport City Hall, stopping at a diorama of Dellwood Park. He talked me through the painstaking process the artist went through to construct the display, only using photos with certain perspectives as references. He then told me about the City Hall itself and its historic use as a school, noting trivia about expansions made to the building.

Despite an hour of policy talk and discussion of planning philosophies, this two minute exchange was what instilled the most confidence in me that Lockport was very much still a Strong Town. Great cities require passionate people, and it’s clear that people like Thies are going to to be the ones who drive progress forward in a nation where local communities desperately need to be strengthened.

But it doesn’t just have to be government employees driving change. When you or I participate in a neighborhood barbecue, talk with the neighbors, or advocate for issues at city hall, we make noticeable impacts to our community, strengthening our bonds and creating a more welcoming and hospitable environment for everyone.

A “strong town” isn’t simply a frivolous title awarded to a city; It is a status made by those within it.

Special thanks to Lance Thies for the insight provided to this article.

Correction 3/13/2025: A prior version of this article incorrectly referred to the Lockport Sanitary and Ship Canal and the City of Lockport Treatment Plant as the “San Antonio/St. Terrence Canal” and the “San Antonio Treatment Plant” respectively.