Mobilize Your Place for Change with the Community Action Lab
We meet them all the time: people who discover Strong Towns and compare the experience to blinders being removed. Sometimes they describe it as a red-pill moment. They tell us they can’t unsee the wasted resources—money, land, time, energy, trust, political will—consumed by the Suburban Experiment. They can’t unsee the stroads and how hostile parts of the city feel to anyone not in a car. They also can’t help but think about all the good things their community has going for it, the untapped potential, the inherited legacy of previous generations of town-builders that is worth nurturing.
As Strong Towns staff, we meet these people. Actually, we are these people. We all had that same blinders-off, scales-falling-from-the-eyes, red-pill experience, too.
Many Strong Towns advocates don’t stop there, though. They don’t want their community to continue down the same path. They want everyone to know about Strong Towns. They want everything to change. They believe their community can become a model on how to grow stronger and more prosperous using the Strong Towns approach. And we at Strong Towns believe that for them, too. But as an organization we’ve never had a way of coming alongside these communities in a way that is rigorous, personalized, and sustained.
Until now.
The new Community Action Lab is the most comprehensive way to mobilize your community for change. It takes everything we have learned about how to build stronger, more resilient places and it applies them to your specific town or city.
The Community Action Lab is a two-year project designed to introduce Strong Towns ideas to your community, shift the conversation there, and kickstart the implementation of a Strong Towns approach. It combines multiple events, media, community building, training, and mentoring. The result is change—long-lasting, in-depth, far-reaching change.
We are now accepting Community Action Lab applications for 2023. Unfortunately, because of the intensive nature of the Community Action Lab, we only have the capacity to partner with five communities next year. If this sounds like something you want to bring to your community, we encourage you to get in touch soon.
Earlier this month, Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn hosted a webcast in which he introduced the Community Action Lab. You can watch the replay of that webcast above. In addition to outlining the Community Action Lab’s two-year structure, Chuck discussed the kinds of communities we’re looking to partner with, the cost of the project, and what Community Action Labs cities can expect. Chuck and fellow Strong Towns staffer Grace Whatley also answered a number of questions from viewers, including:
What size of community is a good fit for the Community Action Lab: neighborhood, town, city, county, region?
How do I get my own community ready for a Community Action Lab in 2023 and beyond?
Do I need 100% buy-in from, say, my city councilors or city staff? (Spoiler alert: No!)
If you would like to learn more about Community Action Lab, or if you want to schedule an informational call with Grace, check out strongtowns.org/cal. We hope we get a chance to bring the Community Action Lab to your town.
John Pattison is the Community Builder for Strong Towns. In this role, he works with advocates in hundreds of communities as they start and lead local Strong Towns groups called Local Conversations. John is the author of two books, most recently Slow Church (IVP), which takes inspiration from Slow Food and the other Slow movements to help faith communities reimagine how they live life together in the neighborhood. He also co-hosts The Membership, a podcast inspired by the life and work of Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer, writer, and activist. John and his family live in Silverton, Oregon. You can connect with him on Twitter at @johnepattison.
Want to start a Local Conversation, or implement the Strong Towns approach in your community? Email John.