Fiscally-informed planning, design, and community engagement to cultivate strong neighborhoods.
Human cities for human people
We’re still building car-dominant places—even in supposedly “walkable” parts of town. But this doesn’t reflect the environments people consistently indicate they want.
Is your city racing to the bottom or the top?
Playing the low-price game is a common economic development strategy, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good one.
How did we get used to out-of-scale cities?
We put up with design flaws all over our cities that we’d never tolerate in our homes. What gives?
Announcing a new webinar on fiscal sustainability & community engagement (UPDATED)
We’re excited to let you know that on Friday, Nov. 30, Kevin Shepherd and Felix Landry will be hosting a free (but limited-participation) live webinar – Dollars and Sense: How to Cultivate (Real) Fiscal Sustainability + Community Engagement. Sign up here!
New look, new people, new ways to serve
Back in August, Kevin wrote about our company’s journey and some changes on the horizon for our crew. Here’s a quick recap of what’s happened over the last few months and what we have coming up on our to-do list.
Nine lessons for putting Strong Towns principles into practice
“So, what is needed to help communities put Strong Towns principles into practice in a meaningful and lasting way? Or, in broader terms, to cultivate civic vitality in our cities?”
On 'civic vitality'
For us, civic vitality describes our professional goal for cities as an ongoing condition of progress and improvement, while avoiding silver-bullet syndrome.
Do our cities gather enough property taxes?
Like any business, cities generate revenue to pay for current costs of operation and for capital improvements. All these services and facilities have a cost, and some such as public safety and streets have enormous costs.
Bonus Episode – A student's perspective on engineering: Nadia Whitehouse interview
Kevin sits down with Verdunity’s summer intern Nadia Whitehouse for a brief chat on the ways the engineering profession is changing, and what it means to bring a resource-conscious, people-first attitude to engineering school. They also get into some of the ways Nadia sees the world differently after a few months with the Verdunity crew.
VERDUNITY (pronounced vur-doo-ni-tee, like community) recently began our eighth year in business as a community planning, engineering, and engagement firm. If you’re in Texas and follow Strong Towns, the small developer/incremental development movement, or participate in CNU you may know us. However, it’s likely we’re meeting for the first time.
Natural systems are infrastructure, too
There’s something missing in the way we talk about (and spend on) infrastructure—and it’s been below us all this time.