For decades, the fight for better cities has played out in council chambers, on city sidewalks, and in the very slow work of redesigning streets. But more and more, the real battleground is less visible—and far more volatile. It’s the stories some people tell about cities. And usually not in a good way.
In that story, bike lanes cause congestion. Traffic calming slows emergency response. Walkable neighbourhoods become symbols of control. And perhaps most dangerous, the idea that change is even possible begins to erode, replaced by a quiet, disturbing mantra: that would never work here.
The founders of the newly launched Urban Truth Collective think that story has gone off the rails—and they’re setting out to rewrite it.
The initiative, which launched in March before beginning to circulate a series of shareable campaigns, is less an advocacy group in the traditional sense and more a communications intervention. Its premise is blunt: the reason so many good urban ideas stall isn’t because they’re wrong—it’s because they’re losing the narrative war.
Brent Toderian has spent more than three decades working in city-building across the globe, in places that have succeeded—and plenty that haven’t. Over time, he came to a realization that now sits at the core of the Collective’s mission. Knowing what makes a city better is rarely the problem. The problem is getting people to believe it, support it, and act on it in an environment saturated with noise.
As he puts it, the challenge isn’t the plan—it’s persuading people of the plan “in the face of unprecedented noise and disinformation,” and inspiring leadership that’s willing to act on it. Too often, he says, the result is that “the truth was losing and the lies were winning.”
That sense of urgency is what brought Toderian together with marketing strategist Tom Flood and researcher Grant Ennis. Each came from a different direction—planning, advertising, and the study of disinformation—but they found themselves circling the same problem: a widening gap between what we know about cities and what people believe about them.
There are, of course, countless organizations working on urban issues. Others focus on misinformation, media literacy, and framing. But what the trio saw was a disconnect between those worlds—a failure to translate good urban policy into compelling, accessible, and resilient public narratives.
“There’s a gap where there are too few groups of people connecting the dots between both of these—the truth about better city-building, and better marketing and communications of those truths,” Ennis explains.
The result is a kind of asymmetry. On one side: detailed studies, technical language, and well-meaning advocacy that often struggles to resonate beyond a converted audience. On the other: simple, emotionally charged messages—sometimes deliberately misleading—that spread quickly and stick.
The Urban Truth Collective’s Brent Toderian, Grant Ennis, and Tom Flood
The Collective exists to close that gap.
If that sounds like a branding exercise, it’s not. Or at least, not just that. The group is deeply invested in evidence—on induced demand, road safety, housing, and more—but it’s equally focused on how that evidence is communicated.
Tom Flood, who spent years in advertising before turning his attention to safer streets, sees this as the missing piece. When urbanists default to data without connection, they lose people. But when storytelling replaces substance, they lose credibility. The real work is in combining both—grounding arguments in research while making them feel immediate and real.
“Storytelling is really important for connecting with people,” he says. “If we get too lost in data and research and forget about the everyday emotional side of the discussion, that’s how we lose… it’s not data OR storytelling, it’s both.”
That philosophy is already visible in the Collective’s early output: bold and brash visuals and messaging designed for a scroll-heavy audience. The kind of work that doesn’t require a planning degree to understand, and doesn’t pretend the audience has one.
But beneath the clean design is an interest in engaging that most politically charged and entrenched urbanism myths.
Take congestion.
Few ideas have proven more durable than the belief that adding road capacity reduces traffic. It’s intuitive, easy to grasp, and deeply embedded in public thinking. It’s also, as decades of research have shown, largely wrong.
Ennis points to the well-documented phenomenon of induced demand: expand a road, and more drivers will come, quickly filling the new space. Over time, congestion returns, often worse than before. Meanwhile, the inverse—reducing road space—can lead to what’s known as traffic evaporation, as people shift routes, modes, or choose not to travel at all.
“Corporations and investors… argue that less roadspace for cars will lead to more traffic, when the opposite is true,” he says. “Traffic calming and bike lanes often reduce traffic.”
And yet, despite overwhelming evidence, the “just one more lane” mindset persists—so much so that it’s become a kind of running joke among urbanists.
“We know that increasing road-space for cars only makes traffic worse,” Ennis adds, noting that it’s become “an ‘in-joke’… ‘just one more lane.’”
Part of the Collective’s approach is to stop treating these ideas as niche or technical, and start reframing them in ways that resonate emotionally as well as intellectually. Ennis invokes a decades-old line from urban thinker Lewis Mumford comparing road widening to loosening your belt to cure obesity—an analogy that cuts through in a way data alone often doesn’t.
But the ambition goes further than debunking.
Rather than endless beefs over bad arguments, the Collective wants to assert clearer, more compelling alternatives. Not just explaining induced demand, but advocating for reduced demand. Not just defending bike lanes, but normalizing the idea that cities should prioritize people over throughput.
This is where language becomes critical.
Even the term “road safety,” the group argues, can be misleading.
“There are a lot of narratives around road safety that need reframing,” Ennis says, pointing to alternatives like “road danger reduction” as a more accurate way to describe the goal.
Similarly, debates around 15-minute cities have shown how quickly language can be weaponized. What began as a straightforward idea—ensuring people can access daily needs close to home—has been reframed in some corners as restrictive or even dystopian.
The Collective sees this as a case study in how powerful, and how fragile, public narratives can be.
Changing those narratives isn’t just about better wording. It’s about repetition, reach, and scale—the same principles that underpin the most effective commercial advertising.
Flood is blunt about this: “Repetition, repetition, repetition!” he says. “There’s a reason why car companies don’t show a car ad just once.”
If better city-building is going to compete in the modern information environment, it has to adopt some of those same strategies. That means campaigns, consistency, and a willingness to meet audiences where they are, not where planners wish they were.
Urban Truth Collective content
Toderian, for his part, emphasizes that the Collective isn’t just speaking to planners or policymakers. Its audience is deliberately broad—anyone who shapes, influences, or participates in the conversation about cities.
“Our ultimate goal is better decision-making about cities,” he says, “so we want to influence decision-makers. But to do that, we have to reach and influence everyone.”
The stakes, the group argues, are not abstract.
When misinformation shapes public opinion, it can also shape political will as politicians scramble for votes. And when political will isn’t there, projects stall, funding dries up, and the status quo persists.
Toderian has seen this dynamic play out repeatedly. In his view, the dividing line between cities that succeed and those that stagnate isn’t geography, wealth, or even size—it’s mindset. Some places embrace experimentation, risk, and what he calls “competent failure.” Others default to caution, delay, and a reflexive belief that change is impossible.
“I often talk about what I call the eight most unhelpful words in the English language—‘We could never do that in our city!’” he says.
“I’ve certainly found… the primary difference between those doing remarkable things, and cities that are failing… is whether they embrace a culture of action or a culture of excuse.”
Changing that mindset—among both decision-makers and the public—is central to the Collective’s long-term ambitions.
Because when that narrative changes, so does what people think is possible.
There are already plenty of examples none better than Paris, which has dramatically improved air quality by reallocating space to walking, cycling, and transit. Others, including Oslo and Helsinki, have nearly eliminated traffic deaths through relatively simple interventions.
But those successes don’t automatically translate. Without a compelling narrative, they can be dismissed, distorted, or ignored.
That’s the gap the Urban Truth Collective is stepping into—with a strategy that is at once simple and ambitious: change the conversation in order to change the outcome.
“We’re ambitious when it comes to real-world change,” Toderian adds. “Why wouldn’t we be?”