Fourteen years ago, Lindsey Meek found something in Strong Towns that helped make sense of her own experience designing subdivisions. A civil engineer by training and one of the movement's founding members, she's watched its ideas spread far beyond the people who first embraced them. Her involvement helped bring Strong Towns to Rochester, Minnesota, where speaking openly about development sometimes carried professional risks. Lindsey looks back on that experience and the encouragement she now finds in younger engineers who are willing to question conventional practices.
Hello and welcome to Bottom Up Shorts. I'm Norm with Strong Towns, and I'm delighted to be able to connect week after week with so many people who are part of the Strong Towns movement, helping to build our capacity to really grapple with these core needs in our communities, and Strong Towns has been offering opportunities for people to join together as members for a long time now, since 2012. And since those days, Lindsey Meek has been a Strong Towns member, a founding part of what we are doing here. And I'm so excited that Lindsey is on the podcast as our 101st guest today, so welcome, Lindsey to the Bottom Up Shorts.
Thank you so much for having me, Norm.
I would love to hear in your work as a civil engineer and in your broader sort of involvement in your community, what are some of the things that you are seeing and observing? Maybe shed a little bit of light as someone that's been able to watch the Strong Towns sort of message mature over time, and more and more people grow aware of it. What's that been like for you, and what are you noticing?
There's so much to reflect on, Norm. 14 years ago, finding the message that Chuck was delivering and folding that into my life, in my world, in my work, there's there's been a lot that's transpired in my path, in my advocacy, and the line of work that I'm even in. Similar to Chuck, I've not been a practicing civil engineer for over 15 years. In fact, I had already kind of exited the design profession as a civil engineer in 2012 when I found Strong Towns, so I was already sort of away from it, which I think actually allowed me to accept the message probably more so than I would have.
I was kind of stepping on the outside of it at that time, so it allowed me to see a little different perspective and looking from the outside in as Strong Towns had been doing, in those early years from the profession.
But it's like being that family member at the family reunion that says, like Grandma's potato salad is not all it's cracked up to be. folks, we got to get serious. And you've tried to be a truth speaker in the community of engineers and helping with that. That is both a challenging place to be in, but I would imagine an invigorating moment too, where you realize like people's lives depend on this, the future depends on this. How did that come about? Where you're I can actually, in my stance here, really help to contribute to reform within the broader profession.
I moved into the world of healthcare construction after my early career years as a civil engineer. Those civil engineering years, we were designing a lot of subdivisions, and so I had again a lot of similarities to Chuck's perspective, designing subdivisions and sort of feeling like something wasn't quite right with it.
And in addition to Chuck, I had another very strong mentor back in those years, Andy Masterpole, who's a landscape architect, and I worked with him in the office, and he was really lobbying for that smart growth was the term at the time, kind of style of development as we as we talk to it, refer to it now as traditional urban design, traditional style of development, and I was really interested in it and really excited about it, and I started thinking about that and actually did a little project for my master's degree on that smart growth style of development.
Again, this is 2008, so almost 20 years ago now, when those terms that language sort of started to become popular, and then I stepped away from the design world and got outside of it, and that's when I heard Chuck's message, and that's when it clicked for me.
I was oh, this all, it suddenly made sense to me, and so the timing of all that worked out really well for me to be able to step outside of the profession, outside of, and I'd love to get into the conversation about Chuck's, the federal court case and all that because it's so relatable for me in terms of the ability to share your perspective as an insider, but being in on the outside in outside of the career field. So I went into healthcare construction. I worked for Mayo Clinic for 10 years.
I began getting involved in the community with Strong Towns as my springboard into the knowledge and the understanding and the lessons and the framework for having conversations with people to help my community, which was Rochester, Minnesota at the time, begin those conversations. And so we actually had Chuck, come 2014 curbside chat, all that. And I had a similar threat, if you will, to Chuck had with his with his with the board, right? It came in a different form. It was like Lindsey, be careful, . It was that sort of same feeling of don't rock the boat here.
And it was more related to my role in a city council campaign that I got involved at the time. And everyone that was supporting that campaign was very into the Strong Towns movement already, and embracing that as a platform for the campaign, and there were folks in the community that felt very threatened by some of the messages that we were bringing forward, and almost to the point of threatening my professional standing as a civil engineer.
And did you have enough standing in how far you'd gotten in your career that you could sort of be buffered against that?
Because I certainly will relate. and this is the very sobering side of I think this effort and the advocacy things that we try to engage in is that I've had young engineers in particular that are newly graduated, and they have been told by the boss that calls them over to the corner office, hey, I noticed what you tweeted, or hey, I noticed what you said, which is Chuck's case has been upheld in the federal court now that says that's free speech, and that's even in the exercise of these types of things to engage civically is vital, and yet you have sort of had to sort of say, "Hey, to the rest of my peers, let's be true to what we commit to, which is like upholding the public well-being, upholding the public trust, and some of that cannot mean like going and reprimanding young engineers and sort of warning them, even as you yourself were warned.
That feels very sobering, but important to have stood up like that.
Of course, the case played out favorable to Chuck and everyone at Strong Towns, and it's it's so empowering. Not for me because I found my voice and I was able to put myself in a career position that those threats no longer exist for me, but I'm so happy to feel the empowerment for those younger engineers that are working in the field that want to have a voice, that want to question things and dig deeper and have a better understanding. I'm so thrilled for them that they can feel empowered by this case to speak their voice, tweet what they want to tweet, and not feel that their license is threatened.
I'm, I'm again, I'm beyond that point of having that risk in my career, so I'm mostly just excited and thrilled for the younger engineers who are really going to continue this work for us and continue to improve our communities.
Yeah, then you've moved to several different cities, and you're currently in Denver. You shared, and in the context of Denver, do you feel like Strong Towns's ideas that you were like, "Hey, I've been on this train for a long time, and I'm delighted to accept new passengers and welcome new people in. It seems that places like even like Denver and some of the suburbs of Colorado are really having a reckoning with these things. We're seeing mayoral candidates, we're seeing council candidates, and so I don't want to say like as one of the oldest people in the movement because you're you're not old, but you've been at this for a while.
But just shed, what does that feel like? And yeah, just maybe connect that with your own sort of personal journey as well.
I left Rochester feeling very satisfied with the work I had done, empowering the community and growing the movement, and being very involved in Strong Towns, to where I kind of just wanted to get away and be anonymous for a while in a big city, so I haven't been as active with Strong Towns in more recent years since I've moved to different cities.
I've lived in Chicago and Atlanta and now Denver, and I do I am on a mailing list for the Denver community of Strong Towns, and a shout out to them because they're they're actively getting together on a regular basis, and I still have yet to make one of their local meetups work for me because I do travel for work fairly frequently. So I just haven't been able to make it. But if I were to show up there, and I will, I will get to one of them soon. And you can hold me accountable to this norm.
And anyone from Denver who's listening, I'd love I'd love to be there and just feel the energy of the group and hear what they're involved in and find out if there's anything I can do to support them. It's just it just I'm I'm tickled to know that there's people that have carried on the movement after those of us founding members. Sort of set the stage, got things rolling, and now it just continues to grow and evolve and improve.
Yeah, and it because these this is the way that our lives work is that things will ebb and flow, and it's sort of like times that you can really engage and participate. And what I love about the local conversations efforts is that it's not dependent on a single individual sort of being the champion in a place because if they have to move away or if they're spirit sort of takes a hit, all of those like different layers are sort of these groups are actually living beyond their founders and that to me feels really important in the efforts that we're making here.
Can you share just a little bit about that transition then from being a civil engineer and then working in healthcare now, because we have Strong Towns leaders that are like pediatricians. So Sharon comes to mind in Virginia, where she just said, "I came back after being on mat leave, or actually raising her kids, and she said I got back into the profession as a pediatrician, and I just found that like my community needed a good community, and that was the biggest barrier from a health perspective that she was encountering.
I'm going to actually do an interview with a trauma surgeon coming up here, and who is very passionate about Strong Towns's ideas because he said, "If I need somebody to be able to recover, I need them to be able to recover in a place that allows them to be mobile, kind of get around their community. What's that been like in your condition or circumstances?
The intersection of civil engineering profession and healthcare is that, and I'm in healthcare construction, meaning I'm building. I'm a project manager for a new hospital construction, and often, and I talk. I talked about this a few years ago in the pod in the in a earlier podcast with Strong Towns.
My work, I can influence the way the facilities are designed because their healthcare facilities tend to consolidate and get bigger, and so their campuses and how are we making sure that the campuses, as they grow within small and medium and large metropolitan areas, are considering what's happening outside of the walls of the facility, and how are staff safely and in a healthy way getting to work, commuting, transportation. How are patients getting there? How are patients able to improve their health outcomes by the things that are happening in the community once they're discharged from the hospital site?
And so it's been a really neat evolution to go from kind of that outside world to now seeing how critical land use and transportation are to the health outcomes of people who live in a community, and I'm excited to have that background and experience to help influence some of the ways in which these facilities are designed, and specifically my project in Billings, Montana. It's a smaller size community.
They're doing some really great things and working with the planning department there, and on transportation and streets and bike racks and all the things that we like to see and talk about in terms of what it takes to build a Strong Towns and just this one little piece of the puzzle of that a community like Billings is trying to create has been really exciting to be part of.
Yeah, and having all that energy like radiate out and sort of like infiltrate into the broader community instead of being walled off from it. And I often think, I want very sterile operating rooms, but I want a really vibrant sort of community space in these types of settings, and I often see I'm assuming the operating rooms are always sterile, but sometimes the plazas are so like bereft of any sort of human life that it just feels like you are in this strange version of a human habitat that you realize oh this is it might look good on paper, but what we need, I think is that element.
Where are people struggling? Well, if they're struggling to feel like they're exposed to the elements when they sit out to have a conversation with someone out in the in open air, let's work on that. Let's provide shade. Let's provide shelter. Those things can make a huge difference. And so, I would love to hear just from you in this and sort of taking a bit of a journey through memory lane with you, what's something that gives you hope as you carry on in this effort?
It goes back to the continued growth of the organization and seeing all the engagement with the younger folks and new members who are bringing fresh perspectives all the time, the staffing and seeing how the organization continues to build its staff that's very energizing for me, and I'm here to bring one small voice to bigger conversations wherever I.
Can and continue to have the support of Strong Towns is empowering for me to continue in my career in doing what I do in my little piece of the world of construction and hopefully evolving into some mentorship as time frees up a little bit more too, and making sure that I'm here for those new members and younger members who are trying to do something, and giving them some, just support. And yes, you can do this. You can go have the hard conversations with your employer, your government officials, and they're going to respect your voices, even if you're bringing the hard questions to the table.
Yeah. Well, Lindsey, I'm sure I can speak confidently for Chuck, who says that he has a deep well of gratitude for the courage that you showed several years ago to really be open about what it is to be a civil engineer in this context, and to advocate on behalf of Strong Towns and for Strong Towns ideas. But also, thank you for sharing today. As I think another wave of people take notice and then actually begin to ask, all right, what more can we do? What have we won, and what are we working towards? I think is such an important thing.
So, thank you for coming up on Bottom Up Shorts today.
My pleasure, Norm. Thanks for having me.
It's great to have you. And so, as you're listening, if you are especially engineering training, or if you are young in your professional life, perhaps working for an employer that doesn't always sing from a Strong Towns's playbook, which would be all of them. In that context, we may actually have further opportunities for you. We're looking to figure out: is there a way we could create a cohort of emerging engineers or people that are in early stages of your career? If that interests you, always reach out. [email protected] would love to connect with you. And thanks, folks, for listening today. And be encouraged.
The tide is turning, and the change is definitely coming. So, with that, take care and take care of your places. This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a nonprofit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a Strong Towns member at strongtowns.org/membership.