Unleashing the Power of the 12 Steps to Town Making
Based on many years of collective experience and coaching, we have discovered that it is possible to identify 12 steps to town making and becoming an incremental developer. If followed systematically, they can significantly speed up the learning process and improve the likelihood of success:
1. Find Your Place
2. Get to Know Your Neighbors
3. Follow the Money
4. Hire the Pros for Your Organization
5. Find Your First Project
6. Clean, Clean, Clean
7. Assemble Your Crew
8. Design & Build with the End in Mind
9. Choose Your Construction Path
10: Activate the Space
11: Succeed Through Good Management
12 Share with Others
Town making is not something you can do by yourself. It takes an ecosystem in which members of the public, private, not-for-profit and financial sectors can get to know and collaborate with one another. One powerful way to do this is by holding monthly meetings, using these 12 steps as a guide. We meet to discuss one step each month until we have gone through all 12 in the course of a year. Once completed, we start all over again.
All it takes to get a 12-step meeting going is a champion, someone who loves their place and wants to make it better. This person is responsible for creating and maintaining an email list of those who want to be notified of the meetings. The champion sends out a simple email invitation two to four days in advance of the meeting. There is nothing else they must do. In fact, we recommend not making it any more complicated than this. Do not start a website, an organization or anything that creates more work. You don’t want anyone to get overburdened or burned out.
The space chosen for the meeting is especially important to the continuity of the group. It needs to be comfortable and inviting. Try to find a pleasant place that is easily accessible, not too formal and where people like to go. It should also be near a bar or coffee shop where attendees can gather afterward to hang out and continue their conversations. Do not have the meeting in a bar or busy restaurant as you will not be able to hear each other talk. Keep the meetings in the same place every month so it becomes a habit.
We recommend starting at 5:30 or 6 p.m. and going for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Start on time and end on time. Hold the meeting on the same day every month — for example, the second Tuesday or the third Thursday, whatever works best for your community. The most important thing is to be consistent so everyone knows the meeting will be held at the same time and in the same place every month.
While individual groups may differ slightly in the way they run meetings, there is a typical format everyone can follow:
Before the meeting begins, decide who will facilitate the meeting. Note that the facilitator is different from the champion. The champion finds and schedules the location, keeps the email list and sends out the monthly invitations. The facilitator presides over the meeting. This does not require any special expertise. Ideally, it should be a different person each time.
The facilitator welcomes participants and opens and closes the meetings on time. They start by introducing any new participants or, if the group is not too big, letting participants briefly introduce themselves (each introduction should take no more than 30 seconds). The job of the facilitator is not to make a formal presentation (no PowerPoints allowed); it is simply to make sure that everyone gets a chance to speak and that no one person dominates the conversation.
After the introductions, the facilitator reads through the 12 steps. This is an important exercise because it helps everyone to become familiar with and remember them. Next, the facilitator introduces the step that will be discussed at the meeting. Then the facilitator or one of the participants gives a five-minute overview of it. For the next 30 minutes, the participants discuss the step, their experiences with it and the challenges they've faced in implementing it.
For the last 15-20 minutes, the facilitator opens the discussion to any topic. Encourage participants to share recent successes, ask questions, give updates on their projects, and talk about difficulties they are having or where they are stuck. At the end, choose the facilitator for the next meeting, confirm the next step to be discussed, close the meeting on time, and invite everyone to hang out at the café or bar.
In our experience, the power of these meetings and the ecosystem that develops from them cannot be overestimated. They work because they are so simple. There is no official group leader and no minutes to record or be approved. Everyone takes their turn being a facilitator. Those who are more experienced help mentor and support those with less experience. Everyone is welcome. You do not have to be a developer to take part. The developers are only one element of the town-making ecosystem. Everyone else in the ecosystem is a town maker as well.
We have seen the impact of the 12-step meetings we started in South Dallas, Texas, and South Bend, Indiana, as well as those others started in Kansas City, Kansas, and Lafayette, Louisiana. They have been the catalyst and foundation of the strong and vibrant incremental development ecosystems that have developed in these communities. All it takes to unleash this power in your community is a champion. It might be you.
If you’d like to learn more about the 12-step process and get the tools you need to implement it where you live, check out our new Strong Towns Academy course: The 12 Steps to Town Making. It’s a step-by-step course for aspiring small-scale developers to make meaningful (and profitable) real estate investments close to home.
We’re also offering a free Q&A webinar on October 23 at 1 p.m. EST for those who have taken the course and want to get their questions answered by Neighborhood Evolution staff. Sign up to join here.
Monte Anderson is President of Options Real Estate Investments Inc., a multiservice real estate firm specializing in developing sustainable neighborhoods. He is also a founding member of Neighborhood Evolution, an organization that specializes in creating ecosystems between cities, developers and local citizens.
Monte and Options have been recognized by the Dallas Chapter of AIA, North Texas Council of Governments, the American Planning Association, Preservation Dallas, Preservation Texas and the Greater Dallas Planning Council for their work.
Mike Keen, PhD, LEED-AP, Broker is managing partner of Hometowne Development LLC, an incremental neighborhood revitalization project located in South Bend, Indiana.
He is also president of The Bakery Group LLC, a group working to renovate an abandoned bakery into a “collaborative village” of retailers, professionals, artists, makers and food entrepreneurs.
Keen is also the organizer of the South Town Makers, a network of small-scale developers, design professionals, finance officers, real estate agents, property managers, contractors, neighbors and municipal officials dedicated to helping create wealth in neighborhoods for neighborhoods.
