Op-Ed: Who Is "Strong Towns" - and Is Our Town Santa Barbara One to Fix, or a Model to Preserve?

A prominent local architect challenges the assumptions of a newcomer community group that favors public comment pressure and courting politicians over broad community buy-in for its ideas.

By Cassandra Ensberg /Santa Barbara FAIA Architect & Artist

If you have been following the debate over State Street since its closure during the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2020, you have probably heard the name “Strong Towns.”

Many people may be wondering: Who is Strong Towns? What are its goals? And does Santa Barbara have the kinds of problems Strong Towns policies were created to address?

Strong Towns offers worthwhile ideas for communities struggling with suburban sprawl, automobile dependence, and costly infrastructure. Santa Barbara is not one of those communities. It is already an established, walkable, mixed-use city centered around a historic Main Street.

To better understand this issue, it helps to know why Strong Towns was created.

A bit of history. By was of background, after World War II, much of America experienced rapid suburban expansion.

Cities spread outward through large subdivisions, shopping centers, office parks, and miles of roads connecting everything together. These communities became heavily dependent upon automobiles and required increasingly expensive infrastructure to maintain.

In 2009, Charles Marohn, an engineer and city planner raised on a farm in Minnesota, founded Strong Towns to address the challenges and failures associated with this pattern of development. The organization draws attention to the problems of suburban sprawl and promotes long-established planning principles such as walkable neighborhoods, mixed-use development, incremental growth, and responsible local planning.

Many Santa Barbarans understand and support these principles and love Santa Barbara because of these qualities that the city exemplifies.

The local chapter of Strong Towns Santa Barbara was established in 2023. Since then, it has become an increasingly active and influential voice in discussions concerning the future and functional use of State Street.

In these public discussions, the Strong Towns chapter appears to be given greater consideration over the opinions and needs of other members of the community who are entitled to have practical access to the downtown public right of way.

Key questions. This concern is especially significant since more than 700 businesses and community members have signed a petition supporting the reopening of State Street for safe, slow, shared public use.

This brings us to two important questions:

1. Why does the local Strong Towns chapter appear to receive greater consideration than the hundreds of businesses, residents, and community members asking for shared access?

2. Does Strong Towns recognize that Santa Barbara is not a troubled example of suburban sprawl requiring correction, but is already, according to many of its own principles, a strong town?

Santa Barbara evolved from classic planning and design principles long before postwar suburban expansion and sprawl occurred.

Known as the “American Riviera” and the “Jewel of the Central Coast”, Santa Barbara is one of California’s most recognizable historic cities, centered around an authentic Main Street with the flexibility that has served the entire community for generations.

Long before “walkability” became a modern planning term, Santa Barbara already had it. A person can walk from the Mission to the Courthouse in approximately 30 minutes or less.

Our downtown is surrounded by established neighborhoods that provide convenient access to the services, businesses, institutions, and public spaces traditionally found along a Main Street. Residents have historically been able to reach downtown using the form of transportation that best meets their needs.

A ‘slow street.’ Before the pandemic closure, State Street was already an early example of what planners now call a “slow street” or “shared street.”

Automobiles traveled at relatively low speeds while sharing the street with bicycles, pedestrians, public transportation, deliveries, and emergency services. State Street was always flexible, and could be opened or closed as needed for farmer’s market, parades and other special events and festivals.

I believe that Charles Marohn developed Strong Towns principles to encourage financially responsible communities with strong civic centers and traditional Main Streets.

Santa Barbara and State Street should therefore be recognized as a model to preserve, not a place whose historic identity and essential function be fundamentally altered.

SB: Already Strong: Strong Towns was created to help struggling communities become more like Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara should not now be changed because the opinion of a local Strong Towns chapter is that our historic Main Street should function differently.

Rather than attempting to change the essence of Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Strong Towns chapter could refocus efforts on priorities that more closely reflect the organization’s stated principles:

• Preserve Santa Barbara and restore Our Town’s historic Main Street by reopening it for safe, slow, shared use and access by all.

• Provide an ADA-accessible municipal shuttle operating up and down State Street throughout the day.

• Encourage appropriate higher-density housing downtown while preserving the scale, character, and historic heart of Our Town.

• Support the development of a practical regional mass-transit system that offers a meaningful alternative to private automobiles.

• Encourage thoughtfully located and appropriately scaled development that respects Santa Barbara’s historic character and protects important landmarks such as the Old Mission.

• Address new suburban sprawl projects proposed throughout Santa Barbara County and elsewhere in California.

Bottom line. Because Santa Barbara already reflects many of the basic planning principles Strong Towns promotes, our town should not be pressured to fundamentally alter the identity and function of its historic Main Street.

Nor should the views of one organized advocacy group outweigh the needs and experiences of other community members and the more than 700 who have signed a petition to reopen State Street.

Santa Barbara leadership has the duty to seriously and respectfully respond to these concerns by reopening State Street for safe, slow, shared public use. Doing so would restore access for everyone, improve bicycle and e-bike safety, accommodate public transportation and emergency services, and preserve the flexibility to close the street for celebrations, community events, and the Fiesta 2026 parade.

Santa Barbara has always been more than just another city. It is Our Town.

As the renowned preservationist and journalist Charles Fletcher Lummis put it - in a 1923 speech that Pearl Chase saw was reprinted annually in the News-Press:

“Stand Fast, Santa Barbara.”

Santa Barbara architect Cass Ensberg works to educate her fellow citizens about the importance of art, design, and architecture through her community involvement, most notably the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara and the Kids Draw Architecture program, which she founded in 1989.

Image: Aerial view of Santa Barbara from above Stearns Wharf (istockphoto.com).

A version of this opinion piece also was published by Noozhawk and the News-Press.