‍Norm Van Eeden Petersman  0:06

Welcome to this Bottom Up Short. I'm Norm of Strong Towns, and this is going to be a little bit different because it's Member Week. On this Bottom Up Short, I want to just take a moment to reflect on about 50 interviews that I've been able to do so far with Strong Towns members. As part of our Bottom Up Shorts program, we really wanted to lean into the question of, what is it that people are doing, and what is it that makes them able to do that?

I think one of the things that stands out in response to the first question is that people are doing all kinds of different things in their quest to help their community become stronger and more resilient. But what stands out to me is the fact that none of these things are so dramatic that they are in the realm of the extraordinary, that people with magic abilities are doing these types of things. Instead, what stands out to me is really reflected in the second part—that they're rather ordinary people just taking initiative, taking the opportunity, seizing those things that are low-hanging fruit in front of them, and really just leaning into it. That's been one of those things that has really impressed me.

Here's the thing. I actually believe what they have shared with me, which is that they didn't grow up believing that they would be the person building a bench for someone to sit at at a bus stop, or that they would be the person that was helping to lead the charge for zoning reform in their community. In sort of a roundabout way, having been involved in so many other projects, they would not be the person that said, "Hey, you know, the thing that I wrote in my school yearbook is that I was going to have a handle on helping people to learn to cycle better in their community." But these are things that have emerged. Other opportunities have come up.

I think this is what stands out as part of the Strong Towns movement—that there's something in the message of Strong Towns in particular, and I think more broadly, in the period of time that we find ourselves in now that really lends itself to this type of local, opportunity-led, small-scale taking of action.

Here's the thing. Throughout this Member Week, what I hope, if you listen to any of the other podcasts in our Strong Towns podcast network—so that's the Strong Towns Podcast with Chuck, where he's doing daily podcasts, the Upzoned where Abby and others are doing it, or if you join us for the Ask Strong Towns Anything session this week where we talk with our podcast hosts—I hope what you come away from that with is just an appreciation. It is about the little things. It is about those opportunities, as I said, that are in front of us.

One of those things that we can look at is, what is it that you can do at your neighborhood level? What is it that you can do maybe at the block level, close to you?

Some time ago, my brother-in-law, Michel Durand-Wood, who writes the Dear Winnipeg blog and frequently has his posts republished on the Strong Towns site, wrote a piece about what to do when your city won't listen to reason. It was a very thoughtful and sort of heartfelt laying out of the very real reality that a lot of you find yourself in. Certainly, I do as well, contemplating and contending with the fact that our city just seems to be locked into systems and patterns and ways of doing things that are not helping in the long term. Yeah, there's showy signs of growth, there's flashy indicators, and yet some of those core fundamentals seem to be missing.

In that context, he said, if you feel you're being stymied, take it down a level. So if you feel you're just not getting anywhere, say with your regional government or with your municipality, see if there's something that you can look at in your neighborhood where people are struggling, and find a way to take action on that using the Strong Towns approach, which is identify the next smallest thing you can do to address that struggle, and then go out and do that.

He said, if it's not working at the neighborhood level—if you can't even get enough people together to paint your crosswalk or to organize some sort of significant Crash Analysis Studio, whatever that might be—he said, take it down to the block level. Take it down to the increment. And then, building on the win that has worked for you, the small success that you've had, then start to build upwards, building with other people, creating those connections.

If I look at the stories that we featured on the Bottom Up Short so far this year—basically for about a year, we launched last member drive in November of last year, and here we are carrying on with this—I think one of the things that really emerges for me as a core theme is just that sense that people took notice, and when they were discouraged, they basically took notice of things that were even closer to them, nearer to hand, and said, "Okay, I can do that. At least I can help with those things."

Manav Sharma was one of our first guests on the Bottom Up Revolution podcast, and he was just creating stickers and putting them on streets to be able to raise questions about the way that we allocate our public realm and what we do with the spaces that we have and the types of messaging that we use with people in our communities.

There are others that have said, "Hey, I want to do the Finance Decoder for my community." That's something you can do in an evening on your own time in the most comfortable position in your home. Just look up your Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports. They're actually pretty easy to find. Plug them into the Strong Towns Finance Decoder, and then do what David Jenkins in La Plata, Maryland did, as we featured him, just saying, "All right, let's think through the implications of this. If my community is not bringing in enough revenues to be able to cover the longer term as well as the immediate term costs of the way that we've built out our community, then let's work to make a change. Let's work to develop our community in a more responsible way." If we go and do some of those small steps, we can really start to make a difference.

Remember, early on, one of my episodes that I did, or interviews that I did, was with Sarah in Poway, California. She was building bicycle parking, building them out of simple wood from Home Depot, painting them with excess paint that she was able to get for cheap, and so using limited resources to be able to create something that was definitely needed in the park. She shared, shortly after the episode published, that actually, those structures that she had created with a couple of friends, they've been taken away. It was dispiriting, and it was disheartening, but it didn't stop her. It definitely contributed to her sense, "Well, there's more that I can do. There's more input that I can seek from others of what it is that we can do to address their needs and their struggles."

As I think about that, I mean that certainly exemplifies and embodies that path that people have been walking. That's why—I don't know if you've noticed it, if you're a regular listener, you might have noticed—we've started to ask a fourth question, not just my closing question, which is always, "Hey, what is it that gives you hope in your community?" One of those things that gives you a pause to reflect and kind of feel the wind come back into your sails when you're thinking, "I do have reasons to be hopeful."

But a third question I added was, what tips or advice or guidance do you have for other people? What I love about it is how unpretentious, but also how modest those tips have been. They're very basic. They're so often, "Hey, you don't have to wait for permission. You don't have to wait for the perfect moment. You don't even have to wait for other people," though sometimes other people can be the help that you need. Give them an opportunity to sort of lean into some of the ways of really improving your community.

Here's what stands out—all of these things are within reach.

So I have this Member Week, one of the things I would ask you to do is go and become a Strong Towns member. I'm not sure if there is a larger incongruity imaginable between listening regularly to Bottom Up Shorts and perhaps you're also a regular listener to Bottom Up Revolution, as these both come out in the same beat, and I'm thrilled that they do because it gives you double the content in just about the same number of days in a week. But if you're a regular listener and you're not yet a Strong Towns member, there's an incongruity there, I feel, because yes, you're helping yourself and equipping yourself to learn from what other people are doing, but there's a small, simple step that you can take, and that's signing up as a Strong Towns member.

When we have surveyed our members, there's a consequence that follows from this, rather than it being sort of a reason why they became a member in the first place. But when we surveyed our Strong Towns members, they were by and large way more likely to be taking on small roles in their community than the regular members of our broader audience. We did audience surveys where we asked, "Hey, are you a member or not yet a member?" For those that were not yet a member, they were much less likely—I think it was 50% were kind of involved in some things in their community, whereas Strong Towns members were, I think it was well over 80%, were involved in all sorts of different things in their community, some as elected leaders, some as technical professionals doing the work, others as concerned citizens.

There's an overlap, and I know well enough not to call it the direct cause, but I do think that if you are able to just commit to being part of the Strong Towns movement, because as a member you are, on the one hand, doing something very virtuous, which is putting a lot of great resources like the Finance Decoder and the Keys to the Crash Analysis Studio and the Housing Toolkits, all of that good stuff. You're putting that into the hands of way more people. Your money basically goes into the distribution of Strong Towns ideas into more households, more community halls, more public hearings, more city staff meetings, all of that sort of stuff. We can see the direct relationship between our ability to roll out new materials and seeing the adoption of those things in ever increasing numbers.

But it also does something else to you, because it puts you in regular contact with stuff that is very deliberately meant for you and meant for citizen-led local initiative. I know that there are other organizations that you can support that are local to your community, and I hope that you do, especially as we come into a time for giving, a time for contemplation on the things that we have in our lives. But at Strong Towns, we're not saying, "Hey, make this one of your charities." We're actually saying, "Make this a part of your commitment to improving your community, to making a difference." Even maybe incidentally or in spite of some of your fears, maybe also taking a moment to say, "Actually, I don't mind if this, over time, presents to me new opportunities to engage in my community in ways that I might not otherwise."

I'll tell you a quick story. When I finished my work in the mayor's office, I moved to an entirely new country and a new city, and didn't get involved in local politics. After I finished my graduate degree, I moved to another country, actually the country that I come from. I moved to Ontario, Canada, and I moved to a community there, and I didn't get involved in local politics. I didn't even really pay too close attention to what was going on.

But then I kind of started to notice that some of the challenges that I faced in my community, the absence of third places or great spots like coffee shops and game shops and other sort of spaces for me to gather, as well as together with other people that I knew, that began to sort of weigh on me. Why is this the way that it is? I've shared before my quest to understand, why don't people know their neighbors? What have we done that we've become so distracted in these ways, but also, distance from each other? What are the longer term impacts of that?

That put me on the track of Strong Towns. In sort of a roundabout way, I discovered Strong Towns content, and then I started to get involved in local politics. I started to get involved in local advocacy, sharing resources with members of my city council and with my regional council and providing input into local plans. It was interesting because it came easier at that point. Remember, I have a degree in Political Studies. I'd already worked in a mayor's office, and I felt that there was a barrier and a kind of a, "Well, why me?" sort of question. But it was being regularly exposed to Strong Towns content that began to put me on a path to saying, "Well, I really want to get involved. I really want to participate in this."

By the time that, you know, another life change happened for me and I moved out to British Columbia in Canada again, and moved to a new city, all of a sudden it was that much closer, where I was much more inclined to say, I need to know, you know, in a sense, who's on first base, who's on second base, who's on third base—participating in understanding sort of the lay of the land in terms of the local politics and what people were emphasizing, but also becoming aware of some of the gaps in the discourse and some of the needs that definitely were not being addressed, things like the long-term financial prosperity of our communities, the walkability of our neighborhoods. It seemed that we were opening new stuff in the wrong places and closing things in the right places. It just was baffling to me, until Strong Towns helped me to understand what was going on.

So I think that a lot of you, as you're listening, are probably going to have somewhat similar experiences, and perhaps you're already way ahead of me. You're already that council member that just is continuing to dive into these things. But again, if you're a Strong Towns member, I'm so glad you are with me and with us in this. That's awesome. It is one of the things that you can do. Obviously, there's so much more that you can do at the block level, at the neighborhood level, at the city level, but it is a thing that matters. If you are not yet a member, just go to strongtowns.org/membership. Sign up today. Become a member. It's Member Week.

We are doing virtual meetups with all of our members, as many as we can fit into the room. There's going to be one for the Midwest, for the Northeast, I think it is, or eastern U.S., for the South and for the West, and then also an international meetup for all of our Canadian and overseas members. Well, overseas from my perspective. If you live in Australia, in New Zealand, in Egypt, in Abu Dhabi, in Brazil, in Argentina, to all of our members all over the place, I'm so glad that you're there. I know you are not overseas from your perspective, from mine. Just bear with me. I know that you understand what I mean. But you're there, and you're with me and us in this Strong Towns movement, building this together.

So if you like what you hear, I always say, you know, make it available to other people and make it ever more present for you in your life as well. One of the best ways you can do that is by signing up as a Strong Towns member.

I'll say this. We do rely on member donations, but I could, even with an honest face, say to you right now, we don't need your money so much as we need your commitment. We need your standing with us. We need you contributing that declaration that says, "Yep, I'm in. I want this in my place. I believe in this." You don't have to make a vow to uphold every single last tenet of Strong Towns. You have to show an interest in wanting these ideas to be in the forefront of the core conversations happening in our community.

So thank you for taking a moment. I'm really glad if you've been tuning into Bottom Up Shorts that you've been saying, "Hey, I'm interested in meeting people in the Strong Towns movement." If that's you, either right now you might be already ready for me to interview you, or not too long from now, you might be that next person that I'm thinking, "Oh, I've got to have you on the show. I'm super excited to introduce you to our audience."

We've got several thousand people each week downloading these episodes. Not all of you are members yet, so just take a moment. And if you are, man, you've done the right thing. Really glad to have you on board. Let's keep doing what we can to build Strong Towns. You got it. All right. Take care. Take care of your places.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  17:07

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.