What Happens When you Find Strong Towns
There’s a lightning bolt moment that can happen when you find the Strong Towns movement. You’ve been looking around your community and recognizing the problems it faces, but wondering how you could possibly start solving them.
Then you stumble across this movement—maybe it’s through a podcast episode a friend shared with you, maybe it’s through an event that took place at your city hall—and suddenly you realize you’re not alone. There are others trying to do this work too! And there’s an organization here to support you in your journey.
Today, I want to share with you some words from Strong Towns members who have experienced this lightning-bolt moment, too.
Alexander Dukes joined Strong Towns several years ago and later came on as a contributing writer too. Here’s some insight from Alexander on what he discovered when he joined the movement:
“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.”
Beth Gehred has been supporting Strong Towns as a member for half a decade. Here, she talks about how Strong Towns helped her connect with a community of people who had the same dreams she did:
“Strong Towns has given me a clarity of thought. It has given me this language and this confidence that there are other people who see things exactly the way I am seeing them.”
Christian Wagely helped bring Strong Towns to Pensacola, Florida for a public event. Here’s what he noticed after Strong Towns president, Chuck Marohn, gave a presentation there:
“The local chatter on Facebook the morning after Chuck’s presentation was amazing! I’ve never seen an issue that so brought together people with seemingly disparate interests. There were more liberal environmental and community activists discussing Strong Towns with more conservative and fiscal hawks.
And they all agreed that they loved the Strong Towns message and wanted to see it move forward in our community.”
Across the country, people are waking up to the root causes that have created decline in their places, and they’re joining a movement that is working to change that. Will you join this movement, too?
Cover image: Pensacola, Florida, our 2019 Strongest Town award-winning city. Image via Quint Studer.