Rachel Leonardo: How Social Media Builds Collaboration and Great Places
Rachel Leonardo is the video producer at Strong Towns. She has a bachelor’s degree in architecture and specializes in breaking down complex topics into clear, actionable ideas that inspire local change.
Rachel and Tiffany discuss the importance of collaboration in building great places that foster community, culture, and connection. They explore how social media can encourage that collaboration and how it intersects with Strong Towns’ mission.
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Tiffany Owens Reed 0:06
Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of the bottom up Revolution podcast. I'm your host. Tiffany Owens, Reid, I'm a writer at strong towns, and it's my great honor to host this show where I talk to a variety of ordinary people who are helping improve their communities in a bottom up, grassroots, organic fashion.
At strong towns, we like to think of this show as sort of the case studies podcast, where, if you've listened to chuck at the strong towns podcast, and you've listened to Abby at upzoned and you find yourself so ridiculously inspired but also slightly overwhelmed to the point of paralysis by the thought that you're not professional enough or technically informed enough or connected enough to really put these principles into action in Your Community. This show is for you. We've made this show to introduce you to people who are navigating all walks and seasons of life, who have such a variety of skills and strengths and interests, and who are finding small, sometimes big, but altogether meaningful things they can do to start advocating for stronger towns where they live.
Now, the more I think about this whole issue of like our cities and kind of helping more towns move into more more resilient direction, at some point you have to talk about local government. At some point you have to talk about, okay, specific reforms and policies and all of these things that we need to implement to make our towns stronger. The more I hear about this, the more I'm convinced that the secret ingredient, the secret weapon, to actually being effective of all of this, are ordinary citizens. I think if we can get more ordinary citizens engaged, that can really prove to be like a pivotal turning point to really transforming our cities. However, citizen engagement can also be a bit of a double edged sword. It can also be this kind of like catch 22 because I've heard, I've also heard lots of stories of citizen engagement killing really great ideas, killing great efforts to make towns stronger. So what do you do about this?
The more people I've talked to, the more I've thought about it, the more I'm convinced that citizen engagement is great, but citizen education is better. I think we need more opportunities, more platforms, more spaces where ordinary citizens can just become educated about the issues facing our cities, the trade offs. We need to think about the technical, boring, nitty gritty stuff to help them just make better decisions, help them, help them be engaged better and I think that the most surprising, most surprising event, probably, of like, the last, I don't know, 10 or so years in the urbanism world, has been the rise of the sort of organic, Bottom up world of content creation. I think people who have been taking urbanism content, strong towns content, and moving it onto platforms like Instagram, Tiktok and YouTube have been playing a really critical role in this and in helping solve this education problem. How do you get more ordinary people educated and informed, so that they can be they can be engaged in a more and more effective way.
So I'm currently in this series where I'm talking to several content creators who have been doing this. They've been bringing urbanism content, creating content in a way that's really accessible, digestible, interesting, entertaining, and putting it on platforms like YouTube, Instagram and Tiktok. Their work has made urbanism easier to understand for ordinary people, and helped bring more people to the strong towns movement, but also just to the conversation at large about the future of the American city. All of the guests that I'm having on on this in this series, I'll be four of them total. I'm also going to have the honor of interviewing at the National gathering, so I'll be doing a panel on all of this at the National gathering. I hope you'll come check it out if you haven't bought your ticket. I hope you'll buy a ticket and come and say hi. But I'm really excited to also be able to do these podcast interviews with each of them, because, as you know, panels are just such a they're great, but it can also be hard to go in depth and really wrestle with some of these topics. So it's been a lot of fun meeting the panelists and having these conversations today, I'm joined by Rachel Leonardo. She is the video producer at strong towns. So she's actually on staff at strong towns. She's a storyteller with a Bachelor of Science in architecture. By combining design expertise with accessible storytelling, Rachel empowers individuals to rethink zoning, infrastructure and development patterns. She specializes in breaking down complex topics into clear, actionable ideas that inspire local change. We're going to talk about all of that, plus lots of fun, interesting topics on today's conversation. Rachel, welcome to the bottom up Revolution podcast. Thanks
Rachel Leonardo 4:35
so much for having me, Tiffany. I'm super excited to get started with you and also be on the panel with you at the National gathering. I'm glad that we get to break things down a little bit further here first. Yeah,
Tiffany Owens Reed 4:46
me too. I, as I've been doing these conversations, I've been just really excited about them, more and more excited about them, and really happy that I get to go one, one on one with all of you guys. Last week we had Justine on. We have two more guests lined up after you, and I think it's just so fun to really give you all dedicated space to share your thoughts and experience and insights. So let's start telling a bit of your story. Can you tell us a story about how you became interested in architecture, how you chose that as a career path? And maybe you can. You can kind of start telling us a story about how that eventually led you to this larger interest in urbanism? Yeah,
Rachel Leonardo 5:23
definitely. I guess it starts with when I was a child, I definitely had ADHD tendencies. I'm not diagnosed, but the only thing that kept me interested was playing with Legos. So my mom would just sit me down in front of a Lego set, and she knew that I would be entertained and focused for a long period of time, which I'm sure she really appreciated as a new mother. And since then, like I've always been interested in building and trying to express myself through like the built environment, with drawings. And that ultimately led me to studying architecture in college, where I met my first year professor, Greg, too. I don't know if he'll be listening to this. Hopefully he is. He's a major influence on my life and my career path. He introduced me to a lot of different strong towns values, and ultimately, in my senior year for my thesis work, I decided to shift my focus slightly from doing a building design to redesigning a whole neighborhood in the city of Blacksburg, Virginia, to make it more accessible for those students to Have a safer environment and get introduced to these ideas of walkability. That was the premise of the thesis. At least.
Tiffany Owens Reed 6:47
I'm glad you brought up that pivot in your story of kind of how working with that professor, it sounds like to me when I hear you tell that story, that you shift it from thinking about maybe this is too broad of a category, spaces to places, or like buildings to places. And I feel like that can be kind of a good way to summarize a little bit of the difference between architecture and urbanism. And I think there can be this, sometimes, this misperception that architects are also urbanists. So as someone who's more in it than me, how would you define the difference between architecture and urbanism. Maybe you can talk about the difference. Maybe you can tell us where they can work together, and maybe you can touch on at least what you've seen about where they can kind of come into conflict. Yeah,
Rachel Leonardo 7:29
totally. This is, to me, like a really big topic, so I'll try to keep my answer short, because I think we are just scratching I gave you
Tiffany Owens Reed 7:37
a really big question, so you should just relax and go with the our listeners understand at this point that, okay, cool, good. I mean, this happens,
Rachel Leonardo 7:45
yeah, like today. So I guess I see that the the the role of architecture in like a historical sense, as somebody whose job is to design a building that will be constructed in a town or a city, and they typically are only in charge of understanding and designing whatever the function is of said building, whereas an urbanist is focused mostly on the design and planning of cities and towns right and understanding What functions work best when placed close together, and how are we connecting them in a way that is also safe and secure? Today, my personal take on this is that architecture has evolved into a field that focuses mainly on highlighting the skills of the architect and what they are able to produce as a building so more so focused on the form than they are in actually servicing the communities that these buildings are being built in. And this is something that I'm still grappling with, especially because I love this field. I love buildings. I talk all of my friends ears off about them, but I I see that hopefully in the future, and what my role is is to maybe make more of a connection between what architecture should get back to and its roots, which is servicing the people and having a expertise on a more granular level of what the built environment should look like, and then working with urbanists and developers and planners to integrate those more micro designs into a larger design set.
Tiffany Owens Reed 9:39
Yeah, listening to explain that, I think anyone who has read Jane Jacobs and how she how much emphasis she puts on like buildings and like the type of buildings that are important to achieve a certain kind of urbanism, you know, you can really see, I feel like she does a really good job of, kind of explaining how the two work together, right? But then, as you move into like, more modern, she also can talk. She also talks really well about when architecture really works against good urbanism, right? When buildings are out of scale, if they're too big or they're they're too disruptive and too cataclysmic. And so I think, I definitely think good architecture and good good urbanism go together. And I think a lot of Americans have lived in a context where they're treated very separately, and there's been a very poor understanding a of urbanism at all, and B, of how architecture can help us achieve the goals of urbanism. But I'm thinking specifically about what she says about, like, old buildings and having a variety of buildings at different ages, and also, like a variety of buildings at different of different uses, right? And that's just one of those really practical insights of like this is the this is a good kind of architecture that you need to help you achieve particular goals, particular ends of good urbanism themselves. No,
Rachel Leonardo 10:51
completely. I think, to me, this field is a language, right? And I'm an avid language learner in my free time, and I see the work that I do as as translation, like across the board, whether that is speaking in Spanish or I'm currently learning Italian, not very successfully, but whatever. I digress. But I see that design is is a language, right? I talk to friends and about the places that we live or the places that we visit, and when you're able to break down a space and how it works, and what's actually going on for the person in that space to feel safe and secure or feel like they're in an environment that is going to produce like growth, right? In a in a strong towns, way, then, then they, they, they look at their space differently, right? It's, it's a language because that most people don't understand because they've never been given the opportunity to.
And right now, in in a lot of architecture schools, and I know this is not, is was not singular to the one that I had gone to, because I do, you know, I really appreciate the education that I did get, but the focus is so much on how the architect needs to be, the one designing something that has to look beautiful, or, you Know, to show their skill sets, and I think that calls for a form of design that is not collaborative with the people who will ultimately be inhabiting and using the space that you are designing for the majority of their lives, if they plan on living wherever they do for a long period of time. Yeah. And the biggest gap there is really that a lot of these architects and maybe planners too. I don't want to, I just know the architects a little bit better, because it's my world. They're just they're normally also designing places that they've never even been to. So it's hard to have a good understanding of where you're designing for. And yes, we have cardinal directions, and we have sun roses, wind roses, and we can understand the direction of the sun.
And so there are definitely those elements that we take into account when designing buildings, but it doesn't give us the full picture of how people move through their space, what kind of cultural aspects are important for us to try and highlight or encourage people to take part in and I think the architect can do a better job of maybe understanding that on a granular level when designing spaces that are going to service specific functions, and then speaking with urbanists to get the full layout and having the urbanist better understand the balance of where these functions need to be In relation to one another. So
Tiffany Owens Reed 13:41
that's very well put. I feel like a lot of what you're saying, kind of, I've been thinking about this because I have to get ready to write a talk that will be given in the context of an architecture community. And one thing I've been thinking about is the need I'm not an architect. Why am I giving this talk? That's one thing I've been thinking about. But the other thing I'm thinking about is, like, you know, in conversation with the people putting this that, you know, we've been having this conversation, you know, because a big part of it is all about, you know, how to help restore, like, a real mindset of, like, designing for human beings, and like looking at the more coherent picture, and thinking of the city as a fabric and all of that. And one thing I've been thinking about is, you know, what are the essential what are some, like, essential character traits or virtues that would benefit anybody functioning in this space, either as an architect or as urbanist?
And I feel like a lot of what you're saying kind of validates One thing I've been thinking about, which is the need for humility and the willingness to, like, really study, you know, the light, and really see anything you're and I think this could apply to, like, architects, traffic engineers. You know, anyone who's designing a sidewalk, anyone it's like, having this posture of like, let me take the time to humbly observe and humbly notice people, and be willing to, like, temper my ambitions and my designs by what actually helps people and serves this particular community. And I think in some ways. If you're looking at the history of American architecture, it can be interpreted in some ways as a loss of humility, especially when you start looking at like, I'm not, why do I do this to myself? I put myself in situations that I'm not really expert, an expert to speak on. But the little bit I do know about modern
Rachel Leonardo 15:15
Yeah, right, like you've got, I mean, if you have observations, you're more than entitled to talk about them.
Tiffany Owens Reed 15:21
So, yeah, but it just seems like such a detachment, right? Like, there's just no real attention applied to like, like, what you're saying, like, the specific context, the people, the culture, their patterns, how do they move? How do they walk around? Like, who comes here? Like, is it mostly moms and children, or is it mostly businessmen, you know, and I think just having any good urbanist that you read, if it's William White or Jane Jacobs or, you know, even Jeff specks book on walk a fundamental pattern, like a fundamental building block of everything that is, like a willingness to actually sit and observe people. And I think that really summarizes kind of the spirit of humility that I've been thinking about, that I think could really help just the whole conversation about the future of our cities, of like, well, why don't we go back to actually noticing people, yeah, no, and taking them seriously,
Rachel Leonardo 16:07
yeah? I mean, I think the when we say that, though, like, it sounds glorious in theory, and then in practice, I think we don't have the patience to sit down and do the observation, because this is my take. I think in many ways, we find that sitting on a bench and watching how people move through space is potentially a waste of our time, and we're not necessarily doing anything that's of value. And what's interesting here is like Jane Jacobs and Holly White were at odds with this theory, right, with like they both humbly observed, but Holly White was really interested in the data collection aspect, and I think that's that's where our world has lent, leaned more towards, even though a lot of what Jane had, has said is more mainstream, and I think her, her way about speaking, resonated more with people. And so I in that sense, I think she was better at interpreting the language of the build space. But Holly White's use of data is something that I think that maybe we should lean into a little bit more nowadays, especially with the use of different technologies. I know that that can be also kind of controversial, but the observation can be done through like in tandem with some of these tools. And I don't think that we should lose the human aspect of it, but it's to say that in the moment, we can maybe start to understand or get the takeaways that we're looking for in real time, versus, like, having to just sit there and, like, observe and write down whatever we're thinking about for four hours and then, you know, coming back to that work and, like, revising it, I'm
Tiffany Owens Reed 18:00
laughing at the thought of writing down what I've been thinking about for four hours. That would not help anybody. That would that would not be very helpful data. But that's really not what you're saying. But what I was thinking about when you were saying that was that, I think also too what you're talking about with discovering appreciation for data, I think it can really help. I had a conversation with, I think Sarah rose a couple episodes ago, and she's an artist in Spokane, and one of the things that she taught, we wrestled with was how the perception of dangerous streets is so it's so important to have good data, because what people actually experience on their everyday basis is will not create the level of urgency that's often needed, right? So if you just sit down a bench and you're like, Oh, I saw, you know, four people not able to get up on that curb because they were had a stroller or they were in a wheelchair over the span of a couple hours, that's interesting, but that's not necessarily going to translate into the type of like scope and urgency around like designing places you know, for the you need a certain scale of data to help people move past their immediate experiences, right?
So if you live in the average American city and you're like, Yeah, I guess I saw two car accidents last week or last month, that's not going to translate into the kind of urgency around safe streets as the type of data you know that there's other ways of communicating the data around crashes and unsafety that could actually help people move past, like, their perception of the problem based on their their own experience, you know. So I think we really do need data at a certain level to help people like, oh, like, Okay, I've gotten so used to seeing one or two car accidents a week that I've never really thought about this at scale, and I think that's where data can really help. It can help us get out of that trap,
Rachel Leonardo 19:46
right? Yeah, it's, um, it's a balance, right? There's the there is the emotional side of it, right? Which is, I want to feel safe in the space that I get to live in, and I want to feel like the things that are around me. Are something that I have convenient access to, be it with a car, on foot, bike or tram. Our current built environments lend towards just allowing us to have access to one type of transportation. So how can we allow it to have to give us access to more? So that's where data comes in. But the I think in, you know, the root of that is also emotionally, like the security side of things. How do we marry these two things together? And I really think it's looking at Holly White's approach and Jane Jacobs approach, and trying to find that middle ground. And that's what I see a lot of my colleagues like online doing,
Tiffany Owens Reed 20:43
yeah, I was just gonna say that. I feel like that's what y'all are doing in this space, is you're helping bring together the storytelling and the human impact, but also the data and the background and the history and the context to properly interpret that.
Rachel Leonardo 20:57
Yeah, for sure.
Tiffany Owens Reed 20:58
Let's talk about your filmmaking site then, because, you know, we have this rich interest in architecture and urbanism that I feel like we could spend the whole podcast talking about, but you have this other really amazing and well skilled talent in filmmaking. Can you tell us the story behind that? How did that evolve and how did this lead you? How did all that kind of lead you to this place of now creating these urbanist YouTube videos? Yeah,
Rachel Leonardo 21:25
I think I well as a child, I think I watched a lot of YouTube, and I had access to, like, the movie recording cert software on the on Microsoft, or like the MAC. I don't remember what computer was but my siblings and I, we would make little movies with each other as kids, and it was always just a hobby, and film photography as well was something that I took a little bit more seriously in college. But after, after ultimately moving abroad to Spain and trying to find work here in architecture, I wasn't able to because of, yeah, certain government reasons that I'm still like processing and working through. It's not that it can’t happen, but I just wasn't aware that you needed to have that your degree, like, certified out here in order to to work.
So I wanted to continue to talk about architecture. It was, it's, it's my greatest passion, it's the thing that I love the most in life. And I still had my camera with me. I'm still still taking pictures. And I was like, you know, what if? If it's not now, it's going to be never. Let's start making little videos, and I'll post them online, on on YouTube like everybody else does, because we all have access to that platform with an email and like, from there, just it just felt right, like I think that's where my strengths aligned to do well, you know, I don't think I'm the best designer and but I love talking about it. And one of the things that I remember one of my professors telling us was, like, architects are good at designing and maybe showing things visually, but we're terrible at communicating. And I think that that I also found is like, a bit of a challenge. And so it's, it's my kind of like, take that to my industry a little bit like, hey, we can do a better job than just accepting the status quo of like, we can't communicate with people because they don't understand the language of architecture. And yeah, that I loved filming as a hobby, and then it just kind of culminated into me being able to encapsulate my my interest in architecture and urbanism in it as well.
Tiffany Owens Reed 23:47
Can you tell us a little bit about you touched on this very briefly, but your move abroad. Can you tell us a little bit about that adventure and how you decided to move to Spain? Yeah,
Rachel Leonardo 23:56
totally. I Yeah. It's a wild one. I in college at the University of Virginia Tech, was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to study abroad for a year in Germany. Germany is where my eyes were really opened up that I didn't really need to get around just with the car. There was a lot of other options for me to get around the around the city that I was living in, and I could finally understand what this language translation thing that I was interested in between this, the built environment, the suburban experiment in the US and like, what we could potentially build out through different frameworks. And that's not to say that the US should be Europe. I always like to caveat that in Germany, my roommates were all from Spain. They were all from the city of Pamplona, and they were just telling me how much they'd think I would have loved it, and all, you know, all this stuff. And I, at the end of my time in Germany, was like, I. Definitely want to move back to Europe at some point, especially when I don't have any obligations. So after the COVID years, I ended up coming back to Europe. And I did decide on moving to the city where I knew that I had a bit of a network. So I am in Pamplona now. I've been here for four years. I chose Spain as well because I know Spanish and German was very difficult, so that's kind of the the backstory as to how I ended up where I am at the moment. But yeah, I have a strong love for the US and and wanting to improve on the built environment there, which is kind of what connected me with strong towns in the first place, and why I feel lucky enough to to now work with them to make content. We'll
Tiffany Owens Reed 25:44
get back to the YouTube and the content side in a minute. But I'm curious about your experience living in Europe. What would you say that your experience living in Spain has taught you about urbanism? I always like to think about how the design of our places shapes the design of our life. And I'm just I know you kind of had this first exposure in Germany, and then you, I'm sure you've just been continually learning and experiencing many great aspects of European urbanism as you live in Spain. If you had to say, like, here's been one really interesting thing that I've learned or one really important thing that's impacted me, what would you say that is man
Rachel Leonardo 26:21
putting that into one word, what the thing that comes to mind is culture. Really the way that this the environment is structured to incentivize people coming together, is very interesting, but it's not done alone with just the built environment. And that is also, again, coming back to humility, something that urbanists and planners and architects need to understand. We often walk through these fields and in this industry thinking that we almost have to solve all the world's problems through the designs of our cities. And we get really philosophical about it, and it's great, and it makes us for awesome conversation. And I do think it moves the needle in this industry, and like continuing to make progress.
But we, we, we need to be more collaborative in in all aspects of what we do and and when you see how much like the local government here is okay with a band walking around the streets because the local bars had contracted them, and now they're just walking around, and now all these people are following them. Like, yeah, like, it's, it's kind of jarring when you're first out here and you're like, again, there's another party. And this is unique to Spain, but, but now I love it like it's, it's, it's beautiful to see people of literally every age coming together and following this, this live music that ends up like taking place in the streets, and that doesn't need to pass through policies or like paperwork that the local government has, like, it's just it is what it is.
And like, you see how the local government has also fostered and encouraged certain cultural things to take place. Like, there's a small town that I visit in the summer with a group of friends for a youth festival, because they celebrate anything here and at this youth at this youth festival. In the past, not so much. Now, they would take, like, cantaloupes and throw them at their town hall as, like a tradition, and the person who got to hit the town hall just like just one bragging rights for the year, right? But it's like that was something that was encouraged. It wasn't seen as a as a threat, and there's, of course, like security things that are put in place, and they do a great job, especially in Pamplona, to like because San Fermin is the running of the bulls. That's what the city is known for. They do a great job and making sure the millions of visitors who come in are safe, that they have a good time, right? But I It does. It takes this collaboration with our with our local governments and with the people who live in our cities to actually make a place that fosters community and fosters culture and and connection. I'm
Tiffany Owens Reed 29:14
so glad you brought this up, because this is something else I've been thinking about lately, how culture and design have to go together, right? And even cultural you need. You can't just fix everything through design. You also need a particular kind of culture to fully activate that design. You need certain norms, right? I think, I think design can help bring out certain behaviors and practices and rhythms and rituals, for sure, but I've just been kind of wrestling with like, even if we had a magic wand and we could turn every neighborhood to, like, a perfectly safe, beautiful, walkable neighborhood in America, you know, in the US, like, would that fix our culture? Of like, would that bring with it kind of neighborly culture? And I think it would take, I think it's going to take time. I think this is actually a bigger challenge.
It's not just like fixing the design and the finance and the safety and all of that, but it's figuring out, how do we cultivate a new language of like, what it means to participate in the public realm as human beings, because at this point, I feel like everyone's on their phone, even if they're in a wonderfully walkable city, or they don't know how to talk to strangers, or they still have so many ingrained habits of privacy and self reliance and distrust that like figuring out that like, oh, you know, the built environment has now given us the opportunity to facilitate new types of interaction with each other, but those are habits. And habits take time that you have to be passed you have to be grown up into habits. You know, those have to be passed down to you. They have to be imitated by other people and and I think that's something to really wrestle with, is like, how do we cultivate the habits of good urbanism in terms as like a social practice, not just the design and the built the built environment of good urbanism.
And I think you're right that sometimes we can pin too much hope on like, if we just fix the built environment, you know, we'll fix all these other issues and and I'm not even saying that it's the job of an urbanist to try to fix social fracture and fragmentation, but I think it's healthy just to have an awareness of like, this is a multi layered challenge, not just fixing the design of our places, but but figuring out, how do we restore a particular set of how do we restore and inspire a particular way of inhabiting those spaces, in terms of how we relate to each other and and I think that's a that's a whole that's a whole new challenge, that's A whole new arena to, like, really wrestle with.
Rachel Leonardo 31:42
Totally, yeah, yeah. I feel that, in my opinion, the the job of an architect and an urbanist is to create the foundation or the framework for a space to thrive. A space thrives when that community comes together and they feel well connected and also rooted to their place. There's a word I just came across called, I think it's campanalismo, which is an Italian word that literally translates to like, well, Campana in Italian and Spanish means Bell, and it essentially means there's a pride for your place that like a pride for the area where you can hear the bell tower ring, so it's like hyper local, right? And and all of this stuff takes work, and I think that that is a big part of socialization. We can use the technology that we have to leverage our connection with each other to a certain extent, but we also need to use it to better, to leverage our connection in a physical space, because the digital one is not is not enough, by the way, if you are listening to this in a digital space, and you haven't gotten your tickets to Nat gat yet, that is where We take the digital to the physical. So that's just
Tiffany Owens Reed 33:02
there you go, right?
Rachel Leonardo 33:07
No, but like, what a beautiful saying, right? And how beautiful in other languages and and, yeah, it is a multifaceted problem. It's something that I think we'll need to to be wrestled with all together and all at once. And it's not going to be a perfect process, and I don't think it's ever going to be 100% but we have to try, because what else is, what else is there? And and I think we are, we're making progress in at least getting people interested in these kinds of topics, and I think the more that we can show what it can be like, the more we can translate these spaces and use technology to leverage that, my hope is, the more that people desire this. And just like you know, Starbucks was able to get famous from their little Frappuccino cups on Instagram 10 years ago, like, we can make it cool to be out in spaces and like celebrating, and I can't necessarily speak for the putting the technology aside part, that's definitely not my field of expertise, but it's also a really interesting conversation as well, to figure out How that, like, what incentivizes you in your space to just drop your phone for a second and be in that present moment?
Tiffany Owens Reed 34:27
I personally think we need more random parties in the street. Just my opinion,
Rachel Leonardo 34:32
these Spanish bands, like, we'll just get my opinion.
Tiffany Owens Reed 34:35
I think people just need to be forced to party personally. I think, honestly, I'm like, sort of not really joking. I really do think more dancing could help. But I digress. Um, tell me. How have you found I want to know, as while you've been living in Europe, when you talk to people, what you do for work, have you come across any interesting, I don't know stories, or just i. Observations about how Europeans think about urbanism, or how they think about cities, or how they think about American cities. What is that? What is that comparison like? I
Rachel Leonardo 35:09
mean, honestly, a lot of the conversations I have with people here are very similar to the conversations I have with people in the US, right? There's just a you take for granted where you live, and how you grow up, and what's normal to you is normal to you. You don't know what's normal to somebody else. So a lot of them live like grew up being able to walk downstairs and go to a corner store and buy bread for their parents and come back home and like, have that with lunch. I grew up living in us, in in a suburban house, a single family home, and, you know, think, you know, fortunately, in a nice neighborhood, and but I had to drive 30 minutes to go to high school every day.
Speaker 1 35:53
Oh, my gosh,
Rachel Leonardo 35:54
yeah, but that was, that was my normal, and I didn't know anything other than that. And I lived like a good, happy life. I have no complaints about how I grew up, but when I now talk to people, actually, I just had a conversation yesterday with a friend of mine here who was who lived in a development very similar to the single family housing style, like just outside of the city here, and they just moved to an area of the city that has more mixed use space. And the way she put it was like, wow, I I feel like I can walk places now. Like, it's so convenient to be able to go downstairs in the grocery stores right there, and we don't have to get in the car car to go right and, like, even here there, they don't understand space and the language of space design. So when I talk to them about it, it's very much like a this, you know, this is how it is. This is why you probably feel this way. And like, try and put yourself in the shoes of somebody else. And I'm hopefully, like, what we can do is say, try to put yourself in US citizens or Canadians, put yourself in the shoes of other people, and try to better understand what it's like to live in this way.
And again, I am always sensitive to compare Europe to the US, because I know a lot of people are like, we're not trying to make we don't want to be to live in Paris, we don't want to live in Berlin. And it's not about that. It's like each of those places is different as well, and much more different than than Pamplona is right? It's about like, what's the the American made or the Canadian made place that you get to be like, I'm so happy that I get to live here and like, this was, this is a place that I'm able to walk to and from work, you know? I'm able to go to the grocery store and on foot because I needed to get eggs because I forgot them, and it doesn't require another 15 minutes in the car and parking and all this other stuff, right? Yeah, and just finding also more local examples for for people, and I think, like, again, content creators who are more local are great example like John. John does fantastic work in Chattanooga and trying to teach people in Chattanooga specifically like what it is that they should potentially be looking for in their city, and asking for and with local examples that local people can feel more identified with and potentially shift their mindset a little bit
Tiffany Owens Reed 38:21
more. Yeah. Back to the content space. Can you share a little bit of what it's like working at strong towns? Maybe you can tell about how you kind of came into that role, and then what is your role? Maybe you can share a little bit about that and what you all are thinking about in terms of how YouTube and these videos can help with the overall goal of just this overall goal of helping our towns become stronger and helping keep the conversation moving forward. How do you see content, social media, and all of that kind of playing into that goal?
Rachel Leonardo 38:55
Yeah, so to start working with strong towns, I came into this role because I made content on the internet. They've they found me that way. And I think I had a conversation with Norm when I had like 100 subscribers, so that was kind of fun, but I didn't think anything of it, and just kind of kept on. At this point. I was working making content for another creator at the time, and that was going well, and I was doing it part time, and on the side, doing my own stuff. From there, I started making short form for strong towns, and then I was brought onto the team full time in April of Yeah, it's been, it's been a year now since I've been working with the team. More or less, August is actually when I started. April is when I did I started doing freelance. So, so Yeah, almost a year now, working full time with with strong towns, making content with them. And yeah, the the process is great. I work with Seairra, our lead story producer. Who is. It's very nice to have, like, a second head to bounce ideas and concepts off of, and, yeah, I think, could you repeat the second half of your question? I feel like,
Tiffany Owens Reed 40:12
yeah, yeah. Sorry. I kind of packed a lot in there. But as you're looking at the, you know, the mission of strong towns, with, you know, building this movement helping more cities become more resilient. How do you see the role of platforms like YouTube or just social media in general? How do you see them helping achieve that goal? Yeah,
Rachel Leonardo 40:34
I think that this comes back to leverage, local leverage. One of one of my content creator friends, Alex Williams, he is he made content, but now he's running for an office position in, I can't remember which district in Calgary, right? And it's like he makes Calgary specific content. He is trying to get people to understand Calgary, and he's using his platform to outreach and talk to other citizens of Calgary so that they can reach out to him and better understand, like, what he has to say, what kind of platform he's running on, and he's trying to move the needle and create a better built environment in Calgary, right?
And I think that that's, like the strong towns idea as well is, how can we reach people who may never have heard of us, right? How do we use and leverage organic content to get in front of people who may have never thought about why car crashes always happen at the same intersection in their city, or who have never thought about why housing prices are so expensive where they live, and they've just not connected the dots. But these are things that affect them in their day to day life, but they just may breeze it off because it's not their world, and content is is the quickest and the and the most economical way to do that today. Who knows, in five years, that may change, just given all of the technological advances that we've seen within the last couple of years, but that is the easiest way to reach people today, and I think that we're doing our best to take advantage
Tiffany Owens Reed 42:12
of that. One thing that I've noticed about the content creator space, particularly as it pertains to urbanism, is that a lot of it seems to be slightly geared more towards an audience that's new to urbanism, like, Oh, let me explain this for you, this thing you may never have seen before. But I think there will come a certain point where we'll have to start thinking about audience like an audience that kind of already understands that, that basic building blocks of good urbanism, and the Ponzi scheme and what a strode is, you know, I think if we're successful, more and more people will actually have that that basic language. How do you think about the challenge of creating content for to get more people informed, kind of, like the new people, versus creating content for people who who have moved beyond that stage and are trying to figure out, like, how do I become involved in my community? How do I run for office? Or how do I translate this knowledge? Or just maybe, who are further along in their journey, and maybe not like they don't really need to be. No one really needs to explain to them what a parking minimum is. They're like, I know that. Right, right? All right. So I'm just curious if this comes up for y'all at strong towns, and if so, how do you talk about it?
Rachel Leonardo 43:18
Yeah, this is big. It's something that I struggle with personally in the in the video creation process. But I think the best way to that we break it down, at least right now, to make it a little bit more black and white, is anything that's 60 seconds long or shorter is probably not enough time to go in depth on any kind of a concept. So we're only going to try and reach a cold audience or avid watchers of strong towns who are going to love the content no matter what. You're never going to please everyone. And there is a lot of nuance that's added into comment sections from people who do consume our stuff that hopefully do further education, or at least pique people's interest enough to want to see like, start scratching the surface a little bit more, I think.
Moving down the content funnel, then you have things like a long form YouTube video where hopefully we're able to dive a little bit deeper into that 101, urbanist understanding. And then you get into other things, like podcasts, I think we're able to dive a lot deeper into certain topics than if it's if it was just 60 seconds, right? Or articles are also a great place, because it allows, it gives a person more permission to reread or really sit with what they're looking at, versus a video which you don't control the pace of how you consume it, right? And then we have things like people who can come to your towns and they give talks and like, there is a there's a at this point, stepped process, moving from video. Go to, hopefully more IRL experiences. Are you getting involved in your in your local community and having these kinds of conversations? And you know, the books that that Chuck and Daniel have written, I would love to continue to push the boundary of the kind of content that we make so that maybe can touch on more nuance and deeper topics.
And you do get that feedback from people there, there will be and that mostly comes from comments right, like, Okay, we understand what a parking minimum is. Most people understand what a parking minimum is. And you can get that as well by just consuming other urbanist content. And then you can say, all right, we can add a little bit more nuance here. Then, right? Why is the parking minimum a bad thing? Like, what is really happening? Well, it's not good for new businesses who want to potentially take over abandoned spaces, because they may have to tear down half of that business in order to put parking spaces that are required, and that's more of a sunk cost than it's worth, and will take too much time for them to start that business. So you have an entrepreneur sitting on their hands in your neighborhood, and they're not able to open up the best Mexican restaurant that you've ever eaten because, because they need to have two parking spaces outside. Yeah, right. So those are the things we think,
Tiffany Owens Reed 46:24
yeah, I think what you're saying about nuance is both the blessing is both like the adventure and sometimes the frustration of being in the urbanism space, even to the extent that I've inhabited the content world, whether that's through Instagram or writing, it's both wanting it to be accessible and understand something that people can understand without having to spend a ton of time reading all the books. But then at the same time, I feel like I can often feel frustrated with like, ah, but there's so much complexity here and so much nuance. So I feel like that's just part of the course, if you're going to if you're going to be in the urbanist creator space, just kind of have to live with that and channel that into, like, interesting creative ideas. I am curious. I'm one. I think some people might wonder, how do you create content for American audiences while living in Spain? Like, I'm just like, maybe you can share a little bit about your creative process or how you approach that. But also, yeah, just how do you navigate that sort of logistical side, yeah, this
Rachel Leonardo 47:22
is a big like dichotomy of my life. I think that may be the wrong word, maybe, yeah, trying to be too fancy there, but it's like the the inner conflict that I think I have inside of me is living here like having some what a sense of guilt for having access to a lot of the things that we want, or trying to, trying to work for in the US, and then just telling people about how in the US, like we should be making these changes, without necessarily referencing where I live. And there's like, questions of if I'm being vulnerable, questions of if I'm being authentic, and if I'm doing a good job of this, because I'm not necessarily making content that is in the place that we're talking about. And there have been things that have had degrees of success, and other things that have had quite a lot of backlash, I think in part, because of my inability to be US based at this point in time. Yeah, I grapple with that a lot at this point.
I think my the way that our process works is we have a great team of thought leaders in in strong towns, and outside of strong towns as well, like urban three, where we'll meet with those teams and they will give us information on things that they're working on, or projects that are fit with the strong towns missions and core campaigns. And our amazing creative team, the comms team, takes that and we make different types of content with it based off of whatever our content strengths are, or, I guess, like where our field is. And that has been helpful, because it gives me the material to make the videos off of, and then I have again, that back and forth with Chuck in them. I will be in the US for about a month, so I'm really looking forward to actually using the space around me to hopefully make some fruitful content, content for the for those people. But I'm kind of learning that if I continue to live out here, it's something that I will continue to struggle with. And I don't know if there's a perfect balance for it.
Tiffany Owens Reed 49:39
Yeah, I have wrestled with the same thing in the opposite direction of moving from Brooklyn, New York to Waco, Texas, where you don't really have good urbanism and creating content out of that space. And so it's been, I think. Was really hard, because it kind of was hard to be motivated or inspired to make anything or say anything, because I was when I was living in New York. I feel like so much of my creative process was shaped by stuff I was seeing. But on the other hand, I don't think I would have written all the columns I did for strong towns if I hadn't been forced to sort of wrestle with what I would call bad urbanism from this, more like immersive, lived in experience, but on a day to day basis. You know, there is a ton of frustration with, like, I can't organize my life around my values, like the things that I have come to appreciate because of how much I love good urbanism are not available to me. And, yeah, it's a different struggle, not to mention the struggle of, like, how do I show up in this place in a positive way, to try to be a good advocate? That's still an ongoing conversation. So yeah, it's funny. I feel like we're on, we're in like, totally different environments, but struggling with kind of, yeah, some similar, similar questions. Um, well, yeah, but thanks for sharing that part of your story.
The last question I'll ask about content stuff and kind of related to your job, is has to do with just you mentioned this earlier. Of like, we don't know where we will be in five years, as it pertains to, like, making content and communicating with the entire world with the click, with the touch of a button, who knows what could happen in five years? Um, but I feel like, from my little bit of experience on Instagram, I dabbled very briefly in YouTube. I feel like one of the biggest challenges is kind of not just making content, not just having something interesting to say and having a good process for actually producing something, not just figuring out who your audience is, then you have to keep up with just the constant reality of like the algorithm itself, or just like the technology itself and how that's it's not like you're writing books books. You don't have to worry about there being a new algorithm for writing books, right? But with making content for these more dynamic spaces, you do have to constantly be aware of like, what's going to be rewarded, what's going to be penalized, what's going to be pushed to the top, how comments are going to be handled. You know, maybe one day the like button will disappear. Or who knows
Rachel Leonardo 52:15
anything that actually that would be, that would be nice, you
Tiffany Owens Reed 52:19
know. So as a creative, how do you how do you process all of that? How does that affect how you do your work, especially when you when you are making content about something that's so important and so meaningful, and you want to make good, excellent content, and you want to resonate with like your audience, but you also still do have to keep up with like the technology itself and and I'm just curious, how do you find ways to stay true to your mission and like who you are as a creative without feeling like you're just participating in what I feel like is a race to the bottom. Honestly, sometimes with like, Ah, how fast can we go viral? I feel like that kind of mindset can compromise quality and thoughtfulness. So how have you wrestled with that? And how do you wrestle with that in the strong times content context as it pertains to deciding what to create, how to create it, and how to do all of that with an eye to like this is how, not just how our audience will receive it, but we also have to take into account how our actual platform will what could happen on the platform itself, right,
Rachel Leonardo 53:17
right? Yeah. Well, I will just make one comment on your our dual struggle between Waco and
Tiffany Owens Reed 53:25
the struggle is never ending.
Rachel Leonardo 53:27
I mean, but in many ways, that's, and this is my like, love of cliches, like, there there's no difference, right? We are struggling in some capacity, and in that there's connection. And I think that we are just trying to figure out how to connect with one another so that we can make this change. And you're doing it in Waco and trying to get activated in your community. And for me, it's like, how do I mend my two worlds of living in Europe and without overly glorifying where I live and showing it as an example in the US, and it's going to be a work in progress, and I think we we need to be cool with that. There's a lot there.
But to get to your point, because it's also really interesting from an analytical lens, one thing that is paramount for the way that I have always approached the content making process is not to think about virality at all. We at strong towns, think about pieces of content either either over or underperforming, and that helps us understand what our average performance is in a month for content, the average number of views that we get in a month. And then we base whatever that median is, sorry, yeah, the median number of views in a month. We base whatever that median is as like the goal post of is something doing well or is something not doing well? And then why is that? Because a lot of the times that ends up being a creative decision, more so than the message that we're trying to get across. Yeah. Um, I really enjoy that process. For me, it is a little bit of the mix of the analytical with the language learning and bringing the art and the data together.
So there's that, and that helps to take away the pressure of we're trying to make a piece hit a million views. If it does, it's exciting, and we like give rounds of applause. Asia Mialezco on our team, she's had a couple of million view videos on YouTube, which has been super awesome. And you know, those should be applauded. But like you said, it's tough to know what the algorithm wants, and sometimes those are so one off that we're not necessarily gathering data on like, what people like, creatively from that that made the message worth listening to. So it is a bit of a learning process to try and move that median higher up month by month or quarter by quarter, in an analytical sense, but in like, a more like personal sense and like trying to continually chase things.
It takes the game from being like you competing with the millions of people posting to these platforms every day to just you on this journey with yourself and kind of competing with yourself. And that's not to say that you're not comparing yourself, and it's not hard sometimes, or you don't feel like you're trapped in the rat race, or like whatever the conflict or the contentious points of am I actually contributing something of value to people in 60 seconds, and are they going to remember it, or is it something they're going to forget after they're done Doom scrolling like there's a lot of big questions here that I don't think we have a ton of time to answer at this point in time, two minutes
Tiffany Owens Reed 56:48
solve our own essential inks,
Rachel Leonardo 56:50
right? But, you know, I think at the very least there is that. And for me, the saving grace has been by posting videos online. I have been introduced to this world of others who who think like I do, and who are interested in these topics and are just as passionate about the things that I'm passionate passionate about, but come from such different backgrounds and different angles, and that, to me, gives me hope, because bringing it back to the beginning, this is about collaboration, and We all bring something different to the table. And right now, social media is a thing that we can leverage to do that in the future. Like I said, that could be like AI and blinking because we're wearing glasses, or we have a chip somewhere close by to our head.
Tiffany Owens Reed 57:33
Oh no.
Rachel Leonardo 57:34
I mean, I don't know, who knows,
Tiffany Owens Reed 57:38
but Rachel, because then we'll talk about my plan to go to the forest and write talks from their phones and everyone together, like Tiffany's gone off her rocker. I think so. I think there's something to what you said about I think at the end of the day, I think humans will win out. I think people will win out, and out, and I think the algorithm will do what the algorithm is going to do, but I think at the end of the day, we're going to figure out, people will figure out how to connect with each other and have the kinds of conversations they want to be having.
And I think I'm hopeful that people will start to care less about going viral or about being on trend or about whatever the latest phrase is. I don't, I don't keep up with slang. And I think people are going to care about like, having interesting conversations and feeling like they're connecting with each other, and I and so I think what you're saying about, you know, competing just with yourself and really paying attention to your audience is probably, is like, definitely way more important than like, racing that, you know, trying to outsmart the algorithm and like, be on, be, whatever the latest trend is, insert, insert, clever young people slang here. Who knows what the word is to mean cool? Can we just all say cool? Let's, let's just say cool. It's cool. Guys like,
Rachel Leonardo 58:51
cool. Is cool.
Tiffany Owens Reed 58:52
Okay. Do we need 70 words that mean cool? Okay, the last thing I want to say, and then I'm going to ask you my last question, is that I think pertaining to your experience in Europe, I feel like, I don't know. Sometimes I feel like Americans kind of hamstring themselves by being closed off to European examples, because at the end of the day, it's not about being gear up. It's about understanding patterns, and it's about seeing the connection between, how does a particular style of urbanism facilitate a particular style, like life and life pattern, right? This will always, this will probably be one of, you know, the one of the models of my life. But like, the pattern of your city does shape the pattern of your life.
And I think if there's a way that I think it's you're really lucky that you get to live in a place where you're able to see certain patterns all the time and hopefully tell stories to help people see not this is what it's like to live in Spain. And we should all be Europe, and we should all move to Copenhagen, but hey, here's what happens when you embrace particular pattern of the built environment, and this is how it can have a tangible impact on the way your life unfolds, because you only get one life right. And I think we should take seriously how that life unfolds and how much time you have to spend in a car. Yeah, looking for parking like. I mean, can we just all ask a basic question, how much time of your life do you want to spend looking for parking like? I would prefer to minimize it as much as possible. Yes, 100% I'm very dramatic about these kinds of things. I'm just like guys. I would rather spend my time dancing. Life is very short. I would just rather spend it looking at beautiful things. Is that too much to ask? I'm not European? Yeah, part of me is,
Rachel Leonardo 1:00:25
well, like, leading into the European thing too. And like you said, the built environment is, is like it creates patterns, and that is a pattern for our life. Look how many different places there are in Europe. And there are so many cultures here, despite the fact that they have a very similar style or a similar way of building out their cities, like Denmark is very different from Naples, which is very different from Lisbon and very different from Vienna, like and these are all places that have more traditional urbanism that were built from the bottom up, that embraced incrementalism, that embraced this collaboration that we've been talking about for the last hour. It doesn't have to be Europe. It ultimately ends up being yours if we embrace these concepts that that strong towns is really pushing for what a
Tiffany Owens Reed 1:01:21
beautiful way to wrap that up. Doesn't have to be Europe, it just has to be yours. Ah, there's so much more we could say, Rachel, like, there's so much more we could talk about. We're gonna have to have, we're gonna have to start doing bottom up revolution extended versions. Sometimes I love it. I just keep running into these brilliant people who have really great things to say, and then we have to have to say it on an hour. Yeah,
Rachel Leonardo 1:01:43
this was great. I appreciate the conversation too.
Tiffany Owens Reed 1:01:49
Tell us about okay with no no need to feel ashamed about the fact that you'll get to live in Europe. What a blessing that's like. I hope you're living it up. So I hope you can answer this question without feeling anxious, but tell us about your town. Tell us about your neighborhood. And what are a couple places that you love to recommend people check out if they come to visit. Yeah.
Rachel Leonardo 1:02:09
All right, so a couple of like places. I'm trying to people come during San Fermin, which is the festival the running in the bowls, and they normally are in the old town, and that is a very different Pamplona than what it is during the rest of the year. So one I would recommend coming at a different time of year, because it's a beautiful city to come and visit. That's just like in general places to come in the city. They're on the weekends. What's traditional to eat for dinner here around 9pm which I know, like, biggest culture shock is the dinner and the meal times here are crazy, but they eat something called the bocata, which is spelled B, O, C, A, T, A, it is a, like, small baguette, and it's filled with, sometimes it's pork. You can get, like, lettuce and tuna, they have different options, but people will eat these in the streets, and then they'll get like, a glass of beer, which is called a Cana here, at least in the north, and we'll go and, like, sit out in the streets and have that for dinner. So there's a place called Jesus Mari, or Jesus Mary, yeah, yeah, no, sans the E. But the that place does really good bocata, does awesome, awesome bocata.
Tiffany Owens Reed 1:03:31
Is this also tradition in Lisbon? I feel like I ran into something similar, and maybe not so much the eating in the street. But I feel like the sandwich and the beer was a very common combination. Yeah, I encountered when I was in Lisbon. It could be, I've actually never
Rachel Leonardo 1:03:44
been to Lisbon. It's on my bucket list, and it's so close by and and it's like, because it's so close, I've just been too lazy to get it. No, I get it. I get how that happens. But I really want to go, Yeah, so there's that. I was just going to add one, one more thing. I was going to say that outside of the city, there's a town called Soreuaren, which is S O, R, E, U, a, r, e n, if you can get bikes in the city of Pamplona, there's, it's really well connected with nature, and this little town has a bar that sits right on a river, and it is, like, the most quaint and quintessential little place to like you just time stops there and you're like, surrounded by these fields and this old little church like this town doesn't even have a bread shop. A bread truck comes and, like, honks its horn, and then all of the neighbors come and buy bread from the truck, like, that's how small it is. But it's it that is an experience that's different, I would say, and totally worth it, especially like with people who are big bike enthusiasts, who I'm sure we have a couple of people listening to this conversation, I know.
Speaker 1 1:05:01
You who, right,
Rachel Leonardo 1:05:04
but I will leave it there. I feel like I could
Tiffany Owens Reed 1:05:06
have to ask for one more place. Do you have a coffee shop? I always ask, Oh, yes.
Rachel Leonardo 1:05:10
Oh, there's so many one that we that I'm going to recently, a lot is, it's called Gosaria, G, O, S, A, R, I, a, it's right near the Plaza de Toros, which is like the Bull Square. And they just have, like, really good coffee, like very good specialty coffee. They also have local beer, like a local artisan who makes it and delivers it there, and also really good, good sandwiches. If you can't tell my diet, I promise I eat other things. But I guess, based off of this, what is
Tiffany Owens Reed 1:05:54
more local type of coffee to order? Or is it I'm just because I know there's so many different ways to do coffee. Is there, like, particular way that you found people enjoy coffee where you are
Rachel Leonardo 1:06:05
just like an espresso with milk, like a cafe con leche? No, that's what it's called, so But no, at least in the north, there's nothing that's like, super specific.
Tiffany Owens Reed 1:06:15
Gotcha. Rachel, this has been such a such a blast. Thank you for coming on the show with me and sharing your experiences and your insights. It's been a lot of fun, and I'm sure the panel will also be lots of fun in just a couple weeks. So if you're listening to this, thanks for joining us for another episode. I hope you'll grab your tickets to the national gathering. Come say hi to Rachel and I and the other panelists, and if there's someone in your community who you think would make a great fit for this show, please let us know using the suggested guest form that is always linked in our show notes. I'll put links to Rachel's work and all the places she recommended, so you can check those out in your in your spare time. I'll be back soon with another conversation. In the meantime, keep doing what you can to build a strong town.
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Rachel Leonardo is a Video Creator at Strong Towns. She began her career in project management for construction projects before transitioning to freelance video production, specializing in educational content about urban planning. Rachel believes everyone deserves to live in strong, resilient towns and that people have the power to make those changes happen. Currently, Rachel is based in Spain, but she grew up in Maryland. Outside of work, she enjoys learning new languages (currently working on Italian!), creating cardboard furniture and chatting late into the night with friends.