On Monday I'm going to be heading to our nation's capital to take part in a forum being put on by the Washington Post. We're also planning a Strong Towns on Tap get together. Here are the details for both of those events.
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The Minneapolis Star Tribune just ran a great piece on Strong Towns’ President Chuck Marohn in which it gives the obligatory ‘creation myth’ of the Strong Towns movement through Chuck’s personal story.
The article was a pleasant read and touched on many of Chuck’s valuable insights, which have helped to propel his blog, podcast, and style of thinking to reach as wide of an audience as they now do.
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394 members from 49 states, 7 provinces and several more countries abroad. That's you, our Strong Towns Membership on our 1 year anniversary. Our National Gathering proved that the future success of our organization lies with our incredibly diverse membership ranks. We have 394 members and we need your help getting to 400 by tomorrow.
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The first Strong Citizens Challenge, Walk to Get Your Groceries, has been going strong for the past couple weeks. We've collected lots of responses on the Strong Towns Forum, and we're excited to hear more over time. If you haven't given the first challenge a shot, we hope you'll consider it.
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At the Strong Towns National Gathering I gave a rapid 8 minute presentation on walkability and the scale of the environment, and as part of my talk I briefly covered the concept of Places and Non-Places. For those of you that read my blog, this post will feel familiar to you and will be more of a recap - which I will apologize for - but based on the positive feedback I have received, I feel that this topic is important enough to share here. I wrote my original post on Places and Non-Places back in October of 2012, and as I expose myself to new experiences and think about these topics in more detail, my view of cities constantly evolves with me, so you will notice a few differences and a more refined description here.
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Our first Strong Citizens Challenge, to Walk to Get Your Groceries, has been running for a few weeks now. If you haven't tried it yet, we hope you'll take a look. We've collected a lot of stories on the Strong Towns Forum, and today I wanted to call attention to a few that were especially interesting.
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After 24 hours back in Brainerd, I'm now headed to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to speak at the Tulsa Sidewalk Summit. A very exciting conversation emerging there. Then I head to Norman, OK, to give a workshop at the University of Oklahoma Institute for Quality Communities.
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I've worked with local governments and had many interactions with police departments. None of this surprised me in the least. All of the incentives we are providing local police departments are wrong. This is a huge problem. When we hear from the poorer residents of Ferguson that they feel a disconnect from the local police -- something we hear from people living in poverty in many cities (when you hear "poverty" in this case think "unable to fight this") -- this kind of thing should connect some dots for you, even while it makes you laugh a little.
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The Minneapolis Star Tribune is the paper of record in my home state of Minnesota. Today I'm humbled and honored to have my work with Strong Towns highlighted in a feature by Jenna Ross.
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On October 1st, I along with fellow members of the urban advocacy group ANALOGUE_interactive rolled out the tactical urbanism project #CitiBikeLikeALocal.
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I have accepted an invitation to post some of my material over at The American Conservative, a publication/website that I read frequently and enjoy. The site has devoted an entire section to an examination of New Urbanism and issues of urban development that are often discounted by those with a more conservative persuasion. This is a tremendous opportunity to share the Strong Towns message with people who should naturally find it appealing but probably would not otherwise hear it.
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The Minneapolis Star Tribune is conducting a cookie contest that is actually, at least at this point, more of a writing contest. We're entering that holiday baking season and so, after spending most of my evening last night getting caught up with my wife (my travel schedule is not family-friendly this month), I decided to work on a contest entry instead of the usual Friday News Digest. Please forgive me for the departure, but it is probably healthy for my brain to put my energies into things like this.
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We're very proud to announce that Andrew Burleson, John Reuter and Ian Rasmussen have agreed to serve on the Strong Towns Board of Directors.
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Subsidiarity isn't a magic fix, but I think an intense dose of it would help our national situation immensely.
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Take a walk to get your groceries. Take some pictures if you like. Share the story of your experience and whatever observations you took away from it, on the Strong Towns Forum. I've posted my own story there as an example, feel free to use that as a template for yours.
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