The Bottom-Up Revolution
In her day job, Victoria Via is an architect who designs affordable housing. In her off hours, she's one of the leaders of a powerhouse Local Conversation in Portland, Oregon. Victoria joins Tiffany to explain what affordable housing has in common with luxury projects and how Strong Towns PDX is working with neighborhood groups and city officials to transform Portland for the better.
Transcript (Lightly edited for readability)
Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast. I'm your host, Tiffany, and I'm excited to be bringing you another conversation today. At Strong Towns, our goal is quite multifaceted. We're on a mission to educate people. We want to help people better understand why their communities look the way they do. What are the choices we've made over the past 100 years or so in this country, as it pertains to how we design and lay out our cities? We also want to help people understand the implications of those choices and the role that we all can play in advocating for better choices in the future.
But we're also about action, not just information, not just education. We really want to empower people to not just understand their city and why it looks the way it does, but to take meaningful action to help move their community towards a more resilient future. One of the main vehicles for helping people take that action are our Local Conversation groups. These are organic, bottom-up groups of ordinary citizens who resonate with the Strong Towns message and who want to put those principles into action in their community. They do this by taking action, in this really organic, bottom-up way, working together to tackle everything from adding more bike lanes to addressing housing reform.
Today, I'm joined by the leader of one such group in Portland, Oregon. Victoria Via is an architect and community advocate based in Portland. As an architect at FORA, she designs housing that centers community, whether it's an affordable, multifamily development, middle-scale infill housing, or an ADU. Her work bridges design and advocacy, and weaves in insights from land use, transportation, and economic development. She is also bringing those insights to her work as co-leader of Strong Towns PDX, where she's helping bring people together and empower them to take an active role in shaping their community. I'm really looking forward to bringing you this conversation. Victoria, welcome to The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast.
Thank you so much for having me here today, Tiffany.
So let's start off with a little bit of storytelling. I'd love to give you a chance to share your story specifically. Can you share about how you came to choose architecture as a career? Maybe you could also add on a little bit about how you chose specifically to focus on housing.
Sure. So as a young person, I was very artistic. I was also involved in advocacy for various social justice causes. I knew that I wanted to do good with whatever career that I chose. I came across this book called "Design Like You Give a Damn" by Architecture for Humanity, and the book highlighted innovative architectural and design solutions to humanitarian crises around the world. It was really inspiring to me to see the potential impact of design and the built form on people's lives, and especially for communities in need. I think at that point, I decided that I wanted to become an architect to improve people's lives through good design.
As for how I got into designing housing, I just sort of fell into it. Some architects know at the beginning of their careers exactly what type of projects they want to work on or what they want to specialize in. I didn't, but I'm very glad to be focusing on housing now.
Can you tell us a bit about your professional journey, maybe from college as you're embarking and pursuing that direction and that goal to where you are now?
Sure. So I went to architecture school at Syracuse University in central New York. Syracuse has a really rigorous, studio-centered program, and at that time, the school had a really great focus on social impact and public interest design, which drew me in. Then I made my way down to New York City after I was hired by a former professor who owned a studio there. I worked in New York City for a few years at a couple of different firms, working on mostly high-end luxury housing. I also got to work on some cool cultural center projects and Hurricane Sandy rebuild work.
After a few years of being in New York, my husband and I wanted to spend some time traveling and rock climbing around the country, so we bought an old RV and started working remotely. I had a few part-time gigs and eventually started working for a firm called Evia Studio. Our focus was on high-quality, sustainable housing, mostly single-family residential. Long story short, Evia joined up with another Bay Area firm who focused primarily on affordable housing, and we became Architects FORA, where I now work as an architect. I've settled in Portland, Oregon. The RV has since been sold. At FORA, I work on housing of all types and scales. Most of our work is designing multifamily infill housing, especially affordable housing in California, Washington, Oregon, and Colorado. We have a really unique practice. We're 100% virtual, fully woman-owned and led, and we are doing our best in trying to end the housing crisis.
That's such an interesting combination that you've had of working on housing, from more high-end housing in New York to now doing affordable housing in these different types of infill housing or affordable housing on the West Coast. What has that been like for you, kind of navigating those differences? What do you think we could learn from those two ends of the housing spectrum? I know a lot of people care about housing. I know it can cause interesting conversations and debates. So I feel like maybe you have an interesting perspective on that.
Yeah, it's been quite the journey. I think working on high-end housing, I learned so much about the power of beautiful design on the human experience, about crafting spectacular spaces for living, and really the fundamentals of designing housing and a lot about materials and interiors. When I was working on high-end housing, my clients were often the people who would be living in that apartment or that house. Now with affordable housing, my clients are nonprofit housing developers, public housing agencies, small developers, and even other architects.
I think I've gotten to bring all of my high-end knowledge into my affordable housing work. Designing affordable housing does bring unique challenges. Oftentimes, you're designing for a specific population, like older adults, transitional-age youth, or those who've experienced chronic homelessness, and you would design these buildings differently and tailored to specific needs. We also employ trauma-informed design strategies to create spaces that support healing for people who have experienced higher levels of trauma.
I think it's also important to note that affordable housing, more so than market-rate housing, has to be conscious and reflective of its surrounding community. So we try to incorporate community engagement into all of our projects. It's always better when you can start engaging with the community right from the beginning, so that future residents and neighbors are heard, so that we can understand the community's values and co-create the design together.
But I think whether an architect is designing a home for someone with a lot of wealth or someone with very little wealth, you're designing a home. You're designing shelter, somewhere that people should feel comfortable and inviting and that should enhance your well-being and quality of life. So I think with design, you're always solving a problem. It's just the constraints and challenges that are different and unique for each project.
As you mentioned, you're now settled in Portland, and as you've been explaining, you focus on affordable housing, but you also focus on this idea called livable communities. Can you explain what a livable community is, and how do you bring that concept to bear on your work?
So at FORA, our team members have dedicated time to focus on an area that they're passionate about, and mine is livable communities. To me, a livable community offers access to safe, affordable choices of housing, transportation, and amenities like grocery stores, parks, and health care to all community members of any income, age, and ability level. A livable community promotes health for people, animals, and the planet, and it has resilient local finances.
As architects, our buildings are just one component of the urban fabric. Drawing from a larger knowledge base of housing and adjacent fields will help us design better. Architects have to think holistically. There are so many topics and issues that are all interconnected, like housing, transit, public health, civic engagement, and economic prosperity. I do strongly feel that architects should be advocates within their communities, especially around housing policy, but also around land use, transportation, and parking. Architects have so much expertise, and we can help translate the very technical issues that we face every day into real, impactful housing policy for our communities. I'm really proud to say that a lot of my FORA colleagues are actually really active in housing and adjacent advocacy work. My colleagues are running their own Strong Towns group and CMB groups.
Yeah, I love that concept of a livable community. To me, it just feels so straightforward and sensible to create holistic, integrated neighborhoods that honor and dignify the variety of needs that people have on any given day, rather than the siloed approach we've taken for a long time in this country, which doesn't really reflect how people actually live. Our lives are so integrated and so mixed. Everything is just all connected and mixed together. I think the built environment and our neighborhoods work better when the built environment reflects that interconnectedness, rather than forcing us into this artificial separation of everything. I don't think that's even psychologically natural to how we're wired to work.
So I think that's definitely really important. Honestly, I hope to see that whole conversation of integrated design really shape how we do neighborhoods in this country. I hope that can really shape the conversation more in the coming decades.
Absolutely.
All right, yeah, really awesome. We've got to kind of just get this general picture of your story and your journey. Let's talk about Strong Towns. Let's talk about your Strong Towns group. So to kick things off with this part of your story, maybe you can share how you found out about Strong Towns and what resonated with you about the message, and then we'll talk a little bit about how you helped with the Local Conversation group.
Sure. So I found out about Strong Towns the same way that many people have through the Not Just Bikes YouTube series. I think my husband Jeremiah showed it to me. Not long after, we heard that a local conversation in Portland was starting up, and then not long after that, a few of us stepped in to help with leadership. For me, I was initially attracted to Strong Towns because of the focus on safe and productive streets. Though all of it resonates with me now.
Portland is doing a lot better than many American cities, but a lot of our streets are not safe for people walking, rolling, and biking. My mom and my mother-in-law, both older adults, moved to Portland a few years ago, and I felt like in their neighborhoods they weren't always safe walking around. My mom has mobility issues, and I wanted them to be able to move around Portland safely as they age. I think, like many other people in the Strong Towns movement, I got involved because I want to make my community better for people that I love. I also really like the idea of community members taking small, immediate action to help their neighbors.
I think this is going to sound like a tangent, but hopefully it's not.
Don't worry. This is a very tangent-friendly podcast.
So the Strong Towns idea of the bottom-up revolution reminds me of my teenage years attending hardcore punk music shows in DC, where the DIY ethos ruled. There'd be these shows where community members would host workshops on how to fix your bike, how to keep your neighbors safe, how to organize community members around social justice issues. I think the Strong Towns approach to me when I first got involved just felt very punk rock. We're rebelling against the norm of fiscal insolvency.
Yeah, I love that comparison. Okay, so talk to me about your Strong Towns PDX group. What are you all working on? What would you say is your goal? I would love to hear a little bit about how you're structured and how you all have found effective ways to help your members really take action in their community.
Sure. So at Strong Towns PDX, we have a few admin leaders who manage the administrative stuff, set the overall strategy for the group, and then do much of the communications and relationship building with partner groups. There are seven of us now, which is great to have this kind of big base of leaders supporting each other.
We then have our muscle group, and they are the inner circle of leadership, a team of super volunteers who are the real muscle behind the group. They take initiative, lead projects, and offer really valuable insights and opinions on things that come up. We really trust them. Outside of those rings, we have our hundreds of other amazing members and volunteers.
I think that one of the most successful ways that we've activated more members this year has been through our neighborhood groups. So we started a pilot of these earlier this year. Portland is a mid-size city with over 90 official neighborhoods, and issues that affect one neighborhood on one side of the city might not be as relevant to a neighborhood on the other side. So by encouraging the development of these neighborhood groups, we're helping people focus on the really hyperlocal, block-level issues that they see every day and that they're experts on. We now have four neighborhood groups. We also have larger district-level groups meeting, and I've just been so excited to see these neighborhood groups take off, Tiffany. We are seeing amazing things happen. People who weren't necessarily super active within the main group are now absolute leaders in their neighborhood groups. They're hosting events, they're building relationships within the immediate neighborhood, and they're also working with the neighborhood associations in Portland and really making a change.
What are some of the issues that you see rising to the surface that people really want to focus on, or some of the challenges they're working to address?
Yeah, so definitely a lot around street safety. With these neighborhood groups focusing on these hyperlocal issues, it's very easy to see that you don't have a marked crosswalk at this intersection, and people don't feel safe here, or this road is too wide and your neighbors with mobility issues are having trouble crossing. So definitely a lot around street safety as well as productive streets. A lot of our neighbors are seeing that there are more and more vacancies, commercial vacancies, in their neighborhoods, and are advocating around that.
That's really interesting. That's something that resonates with me personally. I think that's the first time I've heard of a group focusing specifically on that. Can you share a little bit more about what that has looked like, since I know you're not personally involved in every single initiative, but I'm just curious if there's anything you've heard from those conversations that you think could help cities really be more proactive at addressing that outside of the typical pattern of just doing a big development project and hoping that somehow fixes these little issues of vacancy on a neighborhood level.
Yeah, as you mentioned, I'm not involved in every event and activity now, which is great. I'm so glad the group has grown beyond just me. I think some of our group members started documenting some of the vacancies in downtown Portland. It began just as a walk down the street, and they started building a spreadsheet of all of the vacant commercial storefronts they saw, and it was striking to see them all added up and shown on the spreadsheet.
The result of that was really fun. Some of our group members put up these cheeky, fake redevelopment signs around the city to draw attention to vacant land and vacant commercial storefronts. Our ask to our city councilors was to impose a vacancy fee to essentially make land speculation impossible. We know that so many community members around Portland are wondering why these commercial storefronts are vacant, why there are empty lots all around downtown Portland, why we're seeing empty parking lots in downtown Portland when we hear so much that we need more housing. I'd love to show you a picture later, Tiffany, of these redevelopment signs. They were so cool and got a lot of attention.
Well, thank you for sharing that, because I think it's always helpful when we hear about the full cycle of someone noticing something, coming up with a creative idea, and translating that into a specific ask. Because I think sometimes people get confused. They can see the problem, they can explain why it's a problem, but they're not sure how to translate that into something that city leadership could actually do, whether it's a policy change or a fee like you said, or something else. It's really exciting. This makes my Monday, because I'm like, "Oh, I learned something new about how this could be addressed." I've definitely seen similar struggles in the city where I am, so it's fun to hear about a specific way that maybe that challenge can be addressed. What would you say is your biggest challenge as a group? How do you address those challenges that come up?
So I think one of the big challenges for us has been activating new volunteers as our group has grown. When we first started out, it was a dozen of us meeting once a month at a bar, usually the same people, and when a new person showed up, I could spend ten minutes talking to them, getting to know exactly what they were interested in and what they want to work on. But now we have multiple events a month and tons of new people every month, new signups. I can't go to all the events personally and talk to all the new people.
From my experience, the best way to get people to be active and to come back to another meeting is to build that personal connection. People want to be asked to do something. They're here because they want to do things. I think for us, in addressing this challenge, the neighborhood group approach has really been helping. It's just pushing power down to the neighborhood, the hyperlocal level, and allowing for those smaller groups and smaller focuses to form.
Additionally, one of our leaders, Jake, has been leading a Strong Towns 101 pilot cohort where new folks can sign up to join the current cohort and go through the Strong Towns approach together. They can ask questions within the group and build relationships as a small group. It's been really, really helpful.
Yeah, what has a dialogue been like as you're noticing these problems and seeking to bring solutions with the city at large, or with other residents or people who might be pushing back when you're trying to bring solutions to the table? What have you learned about navigating those kinds of conversations?
Sure. I think with navigating those conversations, it's really important just to keep an open mind and really listen to others. Listen to others in the community who are struggling, who may not see the issues exactly the same way that you do. But it's important to hear others and really brainstorm solutions and ideas together.
I think we have been really lucky to be able to interface with our city councilors and with our city staff. Luckily, our city leadership is open to listening to the community. We've also been able to interface with our neighborhood associations, as I've mentioned earlier, and have actually gotten some of our Strong Towns members to run for the boards of the neighborhood associations, get on those boards, and meet other neighbors. I think that has really helped. People may not always feel the same way, but once you get to know people and build that trust and that relationship with them, they're much more willing to listen to you and hear your ideas.
The fact that you all take this neighborhood approach is so interesting and so on the money. It's almost like Strong Towns next level, because while we have Strong Towns groups where people advocate for their city, the way you guys have decided to structure your group around really focusing on the neighborhood is actually quite insightful and really powerful. Even in small cities, neighborhoods can be so different. I think the neighborhood can be a much more feasible level of involvement for people than maybe city-wide engagement at that scale. I think that's one of the things that makes the local conversation groups so interesting—every group finds their own way to do things. Hopefully, over time, there'll be more and more opportunities for all the groups to keep learning from each other and seeing what works. That's what makes it bottom-up, grassroots, and organic. It's just so fascinating. Do you have any other success stories you want to share about anything else that you've seen your group successfully notice, address, and maybe present solutions for around town or in different neighborhoods?
Sure. So in three years, we have done a lot as a group and individually too. As volunteers, there are so many amazing people who are doing good work in Portland and having a real impact. I wish I could talk about all of them, but in terms of things we've done, I think our tactical urbanism is one of the things that we're best known for.
Different community members have seen street safety issues in their neighborhoods and have taken the next smallest step to make an improvement. This has come in the form of daylighting an intersection with a flex post and a painted line. Other times, a community member will lead a group to paint a marked crosswalk. These projects are always coming from the community. We've even taught other neighborhood-based organizations to paint crosswalks, which is cool.
I think one of the other most important things we've done has been just to build connections within our community. We do all of this advocacy, action, and education, but then we also just get together to hang out. We had this really fun monthly summer event called the Urbanist Social Hour, where we invited all of the other advocacy groups in our local urbanist ecosystem. We just talked and learned about each other and how to support each other's work. One of our amazing leaders, Harper, led these events, and she would say that our movements are only as strong as our relationships. We really need this foundation of friendships and understanding each other in order to do great things together.
I think that's one of the most beautiful aspects of civic engagement. It's actually maybe even greater than achieving impressive goals or accomplishments. It's how these types of gatherings allow people to build social trust, build those loose connections, and build friendships across the entire spectrum from loose tie to close friend. It would be hard to say what's more important—achieving something amazing in the city, like zoning reform, is awesome. But I think a close second is rebuilding the social fabric of our community. We're not just strangers. We have a mechanism to bring citizens together to solve shared problems and build social trust. I think that's incredibly essential in so many ways. You're right on the money with seeing the value in building those friendships and helping people connect. I think people want to. I think sometimes people are like toddlers. They want to hang out and do something useful.
Absolutely. People want to hang out, do something useful, and maybe have a dream. So many people in our group have just made these amazing friendships coming out of these hangouts and meetups, and then that's allowed them to figure out what their shared interests are and what they want to work on together. So it's fun to hang out, but it's also been really productive and useful in terms of getting more things done.
Yeah, I think we need productive, useful friendships. Honestly, I feel like it's something that's missing in the landscape of modern adulting—finding ways to actually get out of your bubble and your immediate social network and contribute to the community alongside other people who you may not even know, may not even like at the start, or may not see eye to eye on everything, but you're working together towards some type of shared goal to improve the neighborhood and the public realm that you share. I think so much meaning comes from that. It's one of those things that's not articulated very well, but then when people start to experience it, they're like, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing." Yeah, I think groups like yours are helping introduce people to this wonderful opportunity of reclaiming and rediscovering civic engagement.
So it's fun, because the year will be over in like six weeks. I get to ask you some New Year questions, which aren't the most fun, but I'm just curious. The year is coming to a close. You guys are getting ready for 2026. What are some things that you're excited about that you all have coming up, or that you're excited that the group is going to be working on?
Yeah, so right now I'm probably most excited about our work with the local transportation department. We are partnering with them to develop some community-led infrastructure programs. It's still in the very, very early stages, but our goal is to let community members lead small infrastructure projects in their neighborhoods. We're allowing community members to help daylight intersections by painting the curbs and by installing objects like bike racks or planters. We're also hoping to allow community members to build and install benches at their bus stops.
We're still very early in the conversations, but we're grateful to our partners at the city. Shout out to PBOT for just having these discussions with us, especially in a time of challenging local and regional finances. I think we're really excited to see folks wanting to step up and fill in the gaps, and we think it's an opportunity to build trust between our community and our government.
Absolutely. I talked about this with a recent guest on the show, and we were riffing on this idea of the missing middle of improvement projects. She was basically explaining how because the incentive structure around implementing ideas is such that only the big projects work, it's structured such that small projects fall through the cracks. No one wants to take the really small things. I think that's a perfect opportunity to bring people together and say, "Hey, we need these flowers planted. Can you guys take care of that?"
Yeah, we were just riffing on how there's this huge gap where all the energy is going into solving big problems, but there are all these little problems that need attention, but there's no political structure to really address those or prioritize them. But maybe this is where ordinary people could help out—let neighbors solve the problems in their community.
This will be my last soapbox for this episode, but I also think you all are addressing another big problem with how politics plays out in this country—not red or blue politics, but politics as in the activities of being involved in your community. We don't get to solve our own problems. I think in doing this, you all are bringing back something pretty great, where it's like, "Hey, here's an opportunity to solve something on your street, to actually physically apply your labor to solving a problem." I think it's so rewarding. I know it's paradoxical, because you could say one of the benefits of having such a wealthy society is now we have experts to do that. We can hire people to do that. But I think you're missing out on something when you eliminate any opportunity for ordinary people to collaborate on solving just really basic problems in their community. I think we've given up a lot in embracing the expert solution to all of these things.
So it'll be really exciting to see how that plays out, especially in the realm of transportation. That's so exciting that you all have a transportation department that's even open to that.
Yeah, we're absolutely excited to help our transportation department be the champion of low-cost, community-driven solutions. We are lucky that they already have a long history of successfully partnering with the community. For example, we have a public plazas program where community members can host plazas with the transportation department. We also have a street painting and street art program. Luckily, we also have a lot of other cities in the country that we can look to and get inspired by. We've been doing our research, and we've seen great programs in Indianapolis and Atlanta, Georgia. So we have precedence there, and we're excited to learn from those cities.
Well, Victoria, I'm so glad we got to bring you on to share about what you're doing and the successes that your group has had and the exciting things you have to look forward to. In closing, tell us a little bit about your neighborhood or your city. You can pick the scale, but I always ask my guests to share a little bit about their town and a couple of places they like to recommend people check out if they come to visit.
Sure. So I live in northwest Portland. It's walkable and within easy walking, biking, or streetcar distance of downtown. I would highly recommend coming to northwest Portland. As for specific businesses, Roast Chocolate House has become the unofficial Strong Towns PDX leaders' meeting spot. So definitely get a chocolate treat from Roast.
Now we've figured out the real key to your success is chocolate.
Chocolate is the key to our success. Yes, we are also fueled by great ice cream from Kate's on 23rd—amazing local vegan ice cream. I would also recommend people go to the PSU Farmers Market in downtown Portland and get a pastry from Orange and Blossom. It's the best patisserie in the city. I would also recommend that people visit Portland during the summer and join a Bike Summer Pedal Palooza ride. It's our summer bike extravaganza featuring different group rides every day on different topics. You'll get everything from a Mariah Carey ride to a tactical urbanism ride—just super fun. Highly recommend.
That's awesome. Visit us. Sold. You had me at chocolate.
Thanks for having me, Tiffany. I appreciate all of your work with Strong Towns.
Well, to our listeners and to the individual who nominated Victoria to be on the show, thank you so much. If you haven't heard about our nomination process, we have a link that we include in all of our show notes where you can suggest someone that you think would make a great guest for this show. If you're thinking of someone in your community who you feel really embodies the Strong Towns ethos, please use that form to let us know about them. I love reading the nomination forms, and I love getting to hear people's stories and then bringing them here. We should have an episode running on Thanksgiving. I'm not sure yet, but in any event, I'll be back soon with another conversation. In the meantime, keep doing what you can to build a strong town.
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.