These are the people building Strong Towns.
This week, we have yet another opportunity to celebrate the people building the Strong Towns Movement across North America: Our members. Thank you for your work, your writing, your advocacy, your financial contributions, and your kind words. We are so proud to support you as you build fiscal resilience, stability, and prosperity in your place.
Of our thousands of members, many have been contributing to our movement for years, and we wanted to know why they keep coming back to read and share our message, and to support our movement. Here's what they said.
“Being a part of Strong Towns means discovering new ways to look at the problems our cities
face and looking for new ways to address or mitigate them.”
—Marielle Brown
Want to make your membership official? It’s easy! Sign up for a one-time or recurring contribution and we’ll make sure you’re first on our list for hearing about new resources, getting discounts on paid content, and more. We’re excited to have you on board!
"As an attorney who helps nonprofits in my practice, I can say that Strong Towns is a model nonprofit, exceptionally lean, fully mission focused, and amazingly productive in its use of resources."
- John Gear
Haile McCollum
“I’m a member of the Strong Towns movement because it helps me connect with people outside of my community that freely share thoughts, ideas, and information about topics I believe are important. I can in turn use what I learn through engaging with other Strong Towns members in order to maker my community an economically viable and vibrant place to live.”
"Strong Towns has proven itself to be a great steward of its resources, including member support. They have invested heavily in their capacity to make the message louder, stronger, and more persuasive. It's been amazing to see this organization truly ramp up into a movement, and I want to continue to be a part of this movement."
- Jennifer Smith
"As a person who works in government it's critically important to build a grassroots message that doesn't come from the top down, but from the bottom up. If citizens want to build strong towns, the politicians will listen. It doesn't tend to work as well the other way. The best ideas in government tend to emerge from the population at large, and are synthesized into law by our representatives."
- Alexander Dukes
"I believe in this effort. I think there's a story to tell here."
- AJ Farley
"Strong Towns makes it much easier to share good ideas (and the necessary criticism) with the people around me, my neighbors and friends, the local political forces. As the discussion moves away from the standard of the last 50 years, the Strong Towns idea and its many publications offer a new, and compelling vision. Or is this a really old idea?"
- Paul B.
“I originally began advocating for smarter growth for sustainability reasons, on behalf of the river conservation nonprofit where I work. But I never would have taken the next step to apply for [Planning Commission] had I not discovered Strong Towns. The podcasts, posts and Strong Towns book have helped me channel my environmental arguments and vague urbanist instincts into a broader and more persuasive vision that has resonated with city leadership in this time of financial stress. It’s exciting to be a part of.
The local Strong Towns Facebook group I administer has also grown in size and influence since we last connected. It’s up to 525 members (up about 150 since August) with about 2 to 3 posts a week.”
- Adam Lynch
Grant Henninger
“As a (now former) Planning Commissioner, Strong Towns inspired me to look at the long-term financial impacts of new developments on the City, and whether they help build community wealth. The existing patterns of development are failing us… We need to develop new approaches to building our cities, and Strong Town is doing that.”
Gracen Johnson
“There is a lot to worry about in this world, but Strong Towns provides a philosophy and approach to channel that concern into a productive way of life at the individual and community level. Rather than simplifying issues into “fixable” problems, Strong Towns embraces the complexity and contradictions that make a place resilient and delightfully human.”