The Vanguard of the Strong Towns Movement
(Source: Unsplash, with edits.)
When you sign up as a member of Strong Towns, you join the vanguard of the Strong Towns movement. In military terms, the vanguard is the group of soldiers who operate at the front of an army as it advances toward its objective. In political terms, the vanguard of a movement is the core of advocates who spark a groundswell of interest in the ideas of that movement.
In Strong Towns terms, the vanguard of this bottom-up revolution is made up of folks like you and me, who have signed up to change the development of North America in this coming century. We are, at this critical juncture, at the leading edge of the turn toward a more prosperous future in resilient and thriving places.
This Member Week, I am excited to celebrate the aspirations and achievements of a million local heroes. These heroes are working in cities and towns to change the way that streets are constructed, challenge how public funds are spent, and lead the way to a more responsible pattern of development. I’ve met and interacted with hundreds of partners in this vanguard action since coming into my role as Member Advocate for Strong Towns.
Fraser in Revelstoke, British Columbia, is changing how his city evaluates housing development at the edges of town. Omar in Ridgewood, New Jersey, is making a difference as a small-scale developer who is bringing a Strong Towns approach of making small bets in his community.
Catherine in Benton County, Indiana, is running a new firm called the Nowhere Collaborative because she wants to “counter any preconceived notions of out-of-the-way places. Every place is valuable! Nowhere also lets me create a ‘now and here’ initiative where we can test short-term interventions in the community.”
Vionna in Cypress, Texas, is settling her family into a new community with fresh eyes as a Strong Towns member and has found ways to build new ties for her daughter with a basketball hoop in front of their home. David from Greensboro, North Carolina, is pressing for changes to the streets outside of a nearby middle school, where six crashes have occurred in the last year due to constant, fast-moving traffic. Rabih from Fort Worth, Texas, is contacting local officials to challenge the status quo around transportation and housing in his city.
It’s been amazing to hear the stories of our newest members every two weeks when my colleague John Pattison and I host New Member Welcome meetings. We hear first-hand stories of students changing their major to enter into the professional world as Strong Towns advocates in civil engineering, planning, accounting, law, and urban design. We learn about homeowners challenging the arcane rules of HOAs and municipalities that are cutting off opportunities for neighborhood investment. We feel the palpable frustration of people who are excluded from full participation in their communities because they cannot drive. These sessions with our newest members reinforce the importance of and immensity of the goal we’ve identified for the Strong Towns movement: widespread and far-reaching changes to the way that we develop the places that we live in.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t also point out that I’m inspired by the stories I hear from our long-time members who have been steadily applying principles and practices that are desperately needed in places large and small. I’ve talked with city councillors and transportation gadflies, high schoolers and dynamic retirees, economic development teams and local investors, and so many more who have taken up this challenge of doing what you can to build a strong town.
This vision shapes the Strong Towns movement:
“Success for a Strong Town means living a good life in a prosperous place. It is an approach where everyone is called upon to do what they can with what they have. It means working incrementally, across generations, in a struggle to fix things that are wrong. It is a shared effort to add to a solid and stable foundation, one that will lift us ever closer to an elusive perfection. The Strong Towns movement is about helping people do the work, but it’s also about making sure they experience the prosperity that should rightly come with that struggle. ”
This vanguard—you who have embraced the vision of what Strong Towns is about—will change North America and countless other places around the globe. That’s the exciting momentum that we want to celebrate as we acknowledge the vitality, effort, and support of a million local heroes who have shared this message, adopted its vision, and begun to change where they live.
Within that mass of advocates, we have over 3,000 dedicated members who have made a conscious decision to support Strong Towns financially so that this message will continue to spread, and so that we can take on the problems we face.
I ask you to join your peers in this vanguard movement. If you haven’t done so yet, become a member of Strong Towns. Join us at the forefront of this bottom-up revolution of a million local heroes.
