The Top 3 Strong Towns Articles and Podcasts from 2022: Norm's Picks

Hey there, I am so happy to chime in with my list of favorite Strong Towns content this year after having had the joy of reading previous years’ lists. As a longtime avid reader of the blog, I felt like these December pieces by Strong Towns staff were a way for me to be reminded of how many thought-provoking articles I’d been able to enjoy over the course of the year. Let me share my top picks with you today and please email me at norm@strongtowns.org if you think I missed an obvious candidate for the article of the year!

(Source: Jessica Alves/Unsplash.)

1. “Building Your Engagement Ladder: Five Practices to Start Advocating for Resilience,” by Tiffany Owens

Tiffany Owens’ article struck a chord with me when I read it. I have shared it with others who want to learn how to take stock of a community’s strengths and find ways to strengthen its weaknesses. In our new member orientation sessions, I ask attendees to describe a problem in their community that they feel compelled to address, and there is always at least one problem that immediately comes to their minds. Tiffany’s article offers a practical series of steps (rungs on the engagement ladder) that apply well here. It’s no exaggeration to say that our members feel compelled to address particular problems. Still, we often pause at the doorway for a very long time before beginning our journey as advocates for change. As Tiffany puts it, “navigating sprawled-out dysfunctional urban landscapes and contemplating ways to advocate away from cataclysmic collapse is a tall order, but…I suppose it’s a good thing we can build ladders.” 

(Source: Mike Knell/Flickr.)

2. “Here’s Why We Respond in Force to One Amtrak Crash While Ignoring Thousands of Daily Car Crashes,” by Chuck Marohn

I began reading the Strong Towns blog in 2014 because I found it to be a rich vein of writing that countered the prevailing narratives on safety, financial resilience, and community life. Chuck Marohn’s article on our fatalistic approach to traffic deaths is an important example of this type of writing. His argument contrasts the types of responses we offer to large, highly visible negative events and those we come up with for the messier, complex tragedies. Refusing to ignore the drip, drip, drip of deaths on our roads and streets is critical if we will respond to this ongoing tragedy effectively. I have high hopes for the 2023 Crash Analysis Studio, and I think the mindset we need to bring us success is contained in this article. This mindset will help a new generation of transportation staff and advocates create “a new, bottom-up practice of traffic engineering that is focused on block-level safety interventions.”

(Source: Daniel Herriges.)

3. “Letting Ugly Things Grow,” by Daniel Herriges

“You like the woods? There’s no shortcut to the woods. You can plant a garden. You can plant a row of trees, but you can’t plant a forest in anything like its finished state. It has to go through its awkward phase. You have to allow it to grow.” Daniel Herriges’s article adroitly expands on what it means to think about the growth of communities in ecological ways. I’ve found that the really passionate Strong Towns members I meet are the ones who grasp this core insight about the way that places grow, in waves of successive actions that must be allowed to occur. The reason this resonates with me is that it is so hard to take a long view of major problems amid this crisis we’ve created for ourselves in our approach to housing policy. We regulate the wrong things and need to remove many of the plastic rings that are strangling our ducks cities. Daniel’s remedy is wise: “Let people try small things to meet their needs.” Don’t be surprised if the magical outcome we desire doesn’t immediately occur, but know that eventually, it will get much better. 

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Honorable Mention: Arbitrary Lines Podcast

I want to give an honorable mention to Nolan Gray’s appearance on the Strong Towns Podcast to discuss his book, Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It. The book is excellent and the podcast discussion with Chuck Marohn is really insightful. There are important reasons why we need to fix zoning, and I hope that Nolan Gray’s book will be one of the cracks in the foundation of the zoning edifice that finally causes it to crumble and give way to something better.

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