7 Surprisingly Simple Ways to Start a Strong Towns Conversation Where You Live
Image Credit: Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash.
What Strong Towns advocates are trying to do is bold to the point of audacious: we are trying to change a suburban experiment that is approaching a century old and has become the default approach to growing towns and cities in North America.
We’ve taken on this work because we see what was always hidden in plain sight—namely, that this development pattern gives us short-term growth (the illusion of wealth) at the cost of enormous, long-term liabilities. In the best of times, it was slowly bankrupting our cities. In times of financial crisis, the road to insolvency travels a lot faster.
You and I are pursuing a different approach—one that values resilience, is relentless about finances, and is built on doing the next smallest thing to help address our neighbors’ actual needs.
That said, it’s not easy—or ultimately even possible—to do this work alone in our communities. We know we have the whole Strong Towns movement standing behind us, but it would be nice to have someone actually standing next to us at the next meeting of the city council, planning commission, neighborhood association, etc.
This is one reason it’s so crucial to build a Strong Towns conversation right where we live, with the neighbors with whom we will be making decisions about our community’s future...and who will have to live with the consequences of those decisions.
Starting this discussion may seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are seven surprisingly simple ways to get the ball rolling. I’ve included examples and additional resources for extra help. If you have additional ideas—or have experience with any of those I mentioned—chime in in the comments!
1. Start a Strong Towns book club
Last fall, Chuck Marohn released Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity. The reviews have been great, but even more heartening have been the stories we’ve heard about people reading the book in common with friends and colleagues. As the pandemic hit, many of the book discussions moved to Zoom. We’ve been able to track with some of them, including this one with our new friends over at Bike Topeka.
Who would you like to read the book alongside?
2. Share an article, ebook, or podcast
This is one is as simple as clicking “Send.” We publish hundreds of articles and dozens of podcast episodes each year. If you read or listen to one that seems especially relevant to your community, send it to a couple friends, coworkers, or local leaders. Then make plans to talk about it.
In addition to articles and podcasts, we’ve published a number of free ebooks that are also easy to pass along. Here are a few:
The Local Leader’s Toolkit: A Strong Towns Response to the Pandemic — This ebook provides a step-by-step roadmap for how cities can emerge from the crisis stronger and more resilient than ever.
Stuck in Park: How Mandatory Parking Minimums Hurt American Cities — This ebook details how parking requirements make great places illegal and what can be done to fix our local zoning codes.
You Get What You Tax For: How a Land Value Tax Can Help Us Build Prosperous Places — Many cities are switching to a land tax to encourage neighborhood investment and renewal. This ebook will help explain this powerful tool.
The Essential Reading List for the Strong Towns Thinker — A list of the top books we recommend reading to sharpen your Strong Towns thinking.
There are other free ebooks here on safe streets, transportation, the housing crisis, and more.
3. Start a hyperlocal blog, vlog, or podcast
I follow dozens of blogs, podcasts, and publications. Among my very favorites are those with a local focus, creating region-specific content that resonates with our approach to building stronger and more financially resilient communities. I think, for example, of DJ Sullivan in East Nashville, and of the Winnipeg-focused blogs of Emma Durand-Wood and Michel Durand-Wood. Our friend Arian Horbovetz writes for an international audience from Rochester; he also creates many videos and podcasts that highlight the people and places in Upstate New York.
Just because you’re writing or podcasting about one particular place doesn’t mean your content won’t have broad appeal. Far from it. We’ve been fortunate to publish articles by Michel, Arian, and DJ here on the Strong Towns site.
Remember, too, that Strong Towns started out as a blog back in 2008. Chuck Marohn, a professional planner and engineer in Minnesota, started doing the math on the infrastructure projects he saw towns and cities undertaking. These were projects that may have seemed like a good idea in the short run, but which ultimately saddled municipalities with liabilities stretching far into the future. To pay for the last major project, cities have to create a new project...and so on and so forth, a spiral of compounding debts that amounts to backing up into solvency—one step forward, two steps back. Strong Towns has grown from a blog into a movement, and, in 2019, our articles and podcasts were accessed more than a million times.
4. Invite friends to a free webcast
In a normal year, Chuck Marohn and other Strong Towns staff and board members speak at several dozen in-person gatherings around North America. When we realized we weren’t going to be able to meet people in-person anytime soon, we shifted our energy toward producing free webcasts on a wide variety of Strong Towns themes. Thousands of people have attended so far. (By the way, many of these webcasts are archived at our community site.)
A couple weeks ago, I started hearing from several friends in my town of Silverton, Oregon that they were going to be attending our webcast on incremental development. What I love about this is that it gives us common language and ideas with which to begin dreaming and working together.
5. Invite someone to go through the free Strong Towns 101 course
We also recently launched a free Strong Towns 101 course for people who recognize the economic challenges their community is facing and want to do something about it. You’ll learn how we got to this point, why you’re not to blame, and the simple (yet radical) approach to fixing it.
Like I mentioned with the webcasts above, one of the benefits of going through this course with a colleague or friend is that it gives you a common starting point from which to take action together. Strong Towns 101 is comprised of 17 short videos. You and your collaborators will get the ideas, language, and tools you need to get started—and some practical action steps too.
6. Just start a regular conversation
This is the simplest and arguably the most powerful way to start a Strong Towns conversation in your city: just start a regular conversation. No Strong Towns materials are needed. You don’t need official permission from local government, don’t need an “invitation to the table,” don’t need advanced math skills, and you don’t even need an internet connection.
As Strong Towns, we believe the hard work of building a successful city is best accomplished through a simple, four-step process:
Humbly observe where people in the community struggle.
Ask the question: What is the next smallest thing we can do right now to address that struggle?
Do that thing. Do it right now.
Repeat.
“Humbly observing” can take many forms, including a walk through a neighborhood. It can also look like asking your neighbors the simple question: “What does our neighborhood need right now?” Or this question: “What are your hopes for our neighborhood?” (Make sure to ask the kids in your proximity too.)
Too much money, time, energy, and goodwill is wasted on projects that don’t actually make life better for the people who live in the community. The solution? Go right to the source. And as a result of those conversations, you may discover collaborators with whom you can work together to make change.
A few years ago, we created a map of established local conversations happening around North America. To find a conversation near you—or to add your own—visit this page. And here are a couple additional resources on how to grow the discussion in your town or city:
ODOT put out a newsletter that seemed to strongly encourage public engagement in their project to expand I-475. Yet when this advocate took them up on the offer, she faced barriers at every step of the way.