Introducing the Strong Towns Action Lab

Welcome to the second week of 2021, the second week of the Strong Towns Year of Action.

Last week we announced the Strong Towns Local-Motive Tour, 10-online events in 8 weeks, all designed to help you take action and make your city stronger and more prosperous. You can get signed up right now and, better yet, get a group in your community signed up and kickstart your year. The Local-Motive train departs the station on February 4.

This week we are launching the Strong Towns Action Lab, the next step in our commitment to provide you the tools and resources you need to take action in your community. You can always reach the Action Lab directly at actionlab.strongtowns.org.

Last year, we did an extensive survey of our audience, particularly to explore where people struggled to implement Strong Towns ideas. We followed that up with a series of focus group conversations with our members. Here is what we consistently heard was needed:

• Help me connect to other Strong Towns supporters near me.

• Provide me with talking points, checklists, and how-to guides for implementing Strong Towns and explaining Strong Towns ideas.

• Give me examples of other places implementing Strong Towns ideas so I can share them with others.

• Help me find the best articles, podcasts, and videos so I can share them with others.

These four things have formed the basis of the Action Lab. On the site, you will find a place to:

• Connect to Resources and access a directory of ebooks, checklists, how-to guides, toolkits, and web broadcasts we have created.

• Connect to Examples, and discover examples of people taking Strong Towns action that we have written up, interviewed, or documented.

• Connect to People, to find where Local Conversations are taking place around North America, with directions for getting connected, as well as instructions for starting your own Local Conversation and inviting others to be part of it. We have put some basic resources there to help you get started, with more to come.

• Explore by Topic, where we have started to organize the best of our content into collections of our work sorted by topic and subtopic. 

In each topic area, we are attempting to provide (1) the Strong Towns take in a shareable summary, (2) links to our best content, (3) links to any related examples, and (4) links to any related resources. This is all nicely searchable too, which should help you find what you are after.

In true Strong Towns fashion, we have created what we consider to be a minimum viable product along with a commitment to improve it over time. In this Year of Action, we have made that a priority. Fortunately, our members have not only given us guidance on what they need most, but they have given us the resources to provide it.

If you are looking for something on the Action Lab but are not finding it, feel free to click the “submit a request” link and let us know what you are after. We’ll do our best to respond.

Stay tuned—we have much more coming this year to support you in building a stable and prosperous community. In the meantime, explore the Action Lab, get signed up for the Local-Motive Tour, and keep doing what you can in this Year of Action to make yours a Strong Town.

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