How Are You Making Your Town Stronger? We Want To Hear Your Story.

What is the Strong Towns movement?

You’ve heard us use the phrase often, but what do we mean by it?

When we talk about the Strong Towns movement, we’re not talking primarily about the hundred-plus podcast episodes we produce each year, the several hundred articles we publish, or the dozens of events we do around North America. When we talk about the movement, we’re not even talking primarily about Chuck Marohn and the rest of the Strong Towns staff.

No, when we talk about the Strong Towns movement we have someone else in mind:

You.

Maybe that sounds hokey, but we are 100% sincere.You are the Strong Towns movement.

Andy Diaz started a local food movement in Peoria.

We work hard at Strong Towns to help grow and catalyze this movement, and to change the conversation across the whole continent about what it means to build lovable, livable, and fiscally strong and resilient communities. But ultimately you are the one putting this conversation to work in your own city or town. Our role in all this is to support, encourage, inform, challenge, and connect. Just as often, you are the ones teaching, encouraging, and challenging us.

Did you know that our movement — yours and ours — is now reaching tens of thousands of people every week? Every day, we hear about Strong Towns members who are taking what they learn from our articles, podcasts, and events and putting those ideas into action.

Strong Towns is building a movement of a million people who care.

And right now, we need your help. Our fall member drive is coming up in a couple weeks, and we want to showcase the range of places where Strong Towns members are out there getting it done in their communities.

Maybe you got a group of citizens together to push for safer street design or better parks or a school your kids can walk to.

Strong Towns-Sioux Falls hosts a monthly Citizen Taco event, then taught other Strong Towns members how to create their own.

Maybe you’re a city planner and ideas inspired by Strong Towns made it into your latest comprehensive plan or influenced your transportation priorities.

Maybe you’re an elected official and you’ve started asking a deeper set of questions about how your community is preparing itself for the future.

Maybe you’re a developer or architect and we changed how you think about creating a place that will stand the test of time.

Or maybe you just did something as small as planting a tree at the end of your driveway to give passerby on foot a little shade — and subtly suggest that cars should slow down and enjoy the greenery.

Whatever you’ve done, we want to know about it.

• Have you done something in your town that’s inspired by our message and content? Do you know of others who have?

• Is Strong Towns helping to change the conversation where you live? Has it influenced local policy or decisions?

We want to hear about it, so we can tell the world how we’re getting the word out there. So we made a survey, which you can fill out here. It’s short and simple, so please take a few minutes and let us know if you’ve got a local success story — or a future one in progress — that’s escaped our notice.

You can also contact our content manager, John Pattison, directly at john@strongtowns.org if you have a story you think we should tell on the site.

Thank you for all the work you’re doing to make your community stronger!

Top photo of York XL via their Facebook page.