Norm Van Eeden Petersman  0:06  

Hello there, and welcome to this Bottom-Up Short. This is a special one, because ordinarily, we're talking with individuals all across North America -- and pretty soon, we hope, in other parts of the world as well -- about their experience as Strong Towns advocates learning to take opportunities in front of them to begin to make change happen in their communities. But we're going to flip the script a little bit. Today, my guest is John Pattison, our community builder for Strong Towns, the heart of our Local Conversations program, in terms of the support that we provide to all of the leaders, and the person within our team who most regularly shares all of the great ideas and energy that is coming from our Local Conversations. John, welcome to Bottom-Up Shorts.

John Pattison  0:52  

Thank you. Yeah, I'm just very excited to be here.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  0:54  

You're a man who breaks the mold in so many different ways. So I figured with a podcast episode, we can do exactly the same, change it up a little bit. I wanted to ask, you are regularly doing onboarding calls to help new people who are interested in getting a Local Conversation started, and maybe not sure about what it takes, or they're already halfway through the process. Can you touch on what that is like, what you are noticing, and maybe some of the highlights that stand out for you.

John Pattison  1:24  

You're right, I will do anywhere from four to eight of these a week. These are calls with people who are interested in starting a Local Conversation in their own community. And the very first step that we ask people to take is to set up one of these calls with me. Sometimes it's with another staffer, but most often it is with me. And these are people from all walks of life. They love their places. They're ready to get involved, or at least they they are feeling drawn to get involved, and they just want to learn more. The first step is to chat with me. And you know what? We used to have these scheduled for 15 minutes, but they would always go 30, so now we just schedule them for 30 minutes, and sometimes they go 45 because they're just great conversations with really inspiring people. And so, as Norm alluded, I will often get off of one of these orientation calls, and I'll immediately go into our team Slack, and I'll just say, "Hey, you'll never guess who I just talked to." Because these folks are ordinary people who love their places with, I think, an extraordinary love, and they're ready to do the extraordinary thing of really getting off the sidelines and into the game. And it is very inspiring work.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  2:42  

Do you have a sense of what the motives are of many of our Local Conversation leaders when they're first getting started? What sort of drives them?

John Pattison  2:50  

Weirdly, I think it's a kind of tension. And I was talking with somebody a couple of weeks ago, and she told me, "I love my city." She said, "I grew up here after college, I came back here by choice. I love my city. I don't want to hate living here." I think for a lot of us, especially a lot of folks who are engaged in Strong Towns conversations, reading Strong Towns content, or watching our videos and just thinking about things like land use. I think we want to not only love our place, but we want to love living there. But there is that gap, and there are aspects of living in our communities that are frustrating. We know as Strong Towns advocates that it doesn't have to be frustrating. It doesn't have to be unsafe for my kids to walk or bike to school. It doesn't have to be impossible, or next to impossible for my parents to be able to buy a house in the same neighborhood where I'm living, because there are lots of different housing types. We all know these issues. We all know the questions. So there's a tension. And I actually think a lot of people who are looking to start Local Conversations are wanting to address that gap. Something that we say at Strong Towns all the time is that everybody deserves to live a good life in a prospering place. Local Conversation leaders want that opportunity for themselves, they want that opportunity for their neighbors, and they want that opportunity for future generations. And so they get in the game.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  4:35  

Yeah. What would you say if someone said, "What is the cost of getting involved?"

John Pattison  4:44  

There are costs. I think one of the obvious costs is just time. I think people think that starting and running a Local Conversation is going to take more time and energy than it does. But it does take time and energy. Most of our groups are meeting once a month, often for between an hour and an hour and a half. But of course, if you're one of the leaders, there's some additional time of reaching out to people, maybe setting up the meeting, and then you become friends with these folks, and so then you want to have a social hour, you know, either after your meeting or in between meetings. And so there's time, there's energy. I think another cost that is harder to quantify is that you are setting yourself up from time to time to have your heart broken, to be disappointed, to work really hard for something and to not get that win. And that is disappointing, and that can hurt, and I think that there is a cost to that. I think one of the things that I love about the Strong Towns approach is that even when we don't get the win that we're looking for, we look for the lessons that we can learn from that, from that process, so that, when it's time to charge back in with new energy, maybe we've learned something from from before, maybe we're taking a slightly different tack. And so even a loss is a win in the Strong Towns approach, because we've learned something. But that is that is a real cost. It's a cost to sort of live deeper and deeper into that tension, into that dissonance between what you know your community can be and, for better or for worse, what it is now.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  6:38  

I 100% resonate with that, because that's been my experience even running a Local Conversation in my community. We just had a revitalization meetup with the four of us leaders to say, "All right, we're setting aside one night of the week. We're gonna make a point of dropping into our little discord chat that we have amongst the four of us. And if we could just keep up small little things that might help us to begin to make some progress there." I think one of the challenges that has also come up in some of the calls that I've gotten to sit in on is the way in which, at the local level, often allyship is really a challenge. I have a saying, "oftentimes local allies are unlikely allies." Just briefly, do you want to touch on the way in which sometimes people wrestle with whether or not they should start something if other things already exist, but also the fruits that we see when a Local Conversation emerges in a place and then becomes a great participant in the broader work of building stronger communities.

John Pattison  7:35  

Absolutely. You're right, this is a question and a topic that comes up a lot in these orientation calls. "Hey, I've been thinking about getting this going, but there are already these six other groups that already exist in my community, or 16 other groups. Does my community really need another thing?" And my response is often twofold to that. One is that, if there is an existing group in your community that is doing Strong Towns things in a Strong Towns way, they can actually become a Local Conversation. There are things that the group would need to do, just like somebody who's starting a group from scratch. We ask folks to take a look at this course that we created. All Local Conversation leaders have to sign what we call the "Don't Be a Jerk Agreement." It's actually super popular. I love it, and all of our Local Conversation leaders love it. And there's some other things like that. So if there's an existing group, maybe they're a good fit for the Local Conversations program. The second part of my answer is that there is often an opportunity, when a Local Conversation gets started, to actually knit together the broader advocacy community ecology. I'm mixing metaphors terribly here, but knitting that community together. As we all know, there are people who are especially passionate about biking and walkability. There's somebody over here who's really passionate about housing, somebody who may be passionate about parking reform or fighting a highway. Well, at Strong Towns, we see all of those things as being of a piece with our development pattern. So, often, when a Local Conversation gets started, those single issue advocates -- and there's no pejorative sense there -- these people were especially passionate about these single issues are coming together with the Strong Towns Local Conversation. And it ends up knitting all of these other groups together in a deeper way. And so we've heard, for example, from Isaac Gonzalez in Sacramento. He said there were all of these great advocates doing work in Sacramento, often siloed from one another. But what happened is, when Strong Towns came to Sacramento, when they started their Strong Sactown group, it ended up weaving those folks together, getting them connected. Now they are working together. And he says it's really lifted the efficacy, if that's the right word, lifted the effectiveness of the entire community. And now we're seeing in Sacramento and elsewhere, these deep transformations that are happening across the city. And if it's okay, I'll say one more thing about this. Yes, Local Conversations change policies. Yes, they help transform the built environment. But -- and this is just me speaking -- I think that, as transformational as the policy change and the built environment change is, the most transformational part is how our Local Conversations actually shape culture. They are a culture making enterprise, a culture making undertaking. Because Strong Towns has that bottom-up orientation, it ends up really changing the culture of the communities, from one that is more top down, or where it's somebody else's job to fix problems, to "Gosh, maybe I have what it takes to step in here. My neighbor and I together can really make a change." I think it goes beyond the policy transformation and does change the culture.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  11:35  

Now, you and I both love the idea of cooperative ventures, collective work being done together, and the idea that, as you have inputs, everybody benefits. I think one of the things that stands out to me, and I'm going to ask you to talk about this, is the way in which, if it was just up to you to provide training and guidance to all of our Local Conversation leaders, it would be virtually impossible for that to happen. And we've recognized that. But something fascinating occurs. More mature leaders are sharing so extensively, templates and suggestions and advice, but also like workshops and seminars and things like this. How is that almost something that we had a sense might occur, but has just blown us away?

John Pattison  12:27  

Yeah, it really has blown us away. There are, as of this recording, 296 Local Conversations around the world. 295 in North America. We had our first group start up outside of North America, in Uganda, a couple of months ago. More Local Conversations area starting up all the time. Those Local Conversations are being led by nearly 1100 leaders. Many of those leaders, to your point, are active. We created a Discord server that's just for leaders of active Local Conversations. I think there are about 700 of them in there. It is such a positive, collegial space where folks are constantly troubleshooting things for one another, sharing maybe the text of a talk that they're gonna give to the Rotary Club, or some a testimony that they're gonna give to their city council. Somebody might say, "Hey, I'm doing a tabling event. Do you have this kind of material?" And folks will share. Now, as as you were saying, we have leaders who are leading trainings. I've already used Sacramento as an example, but Alyssa Lee from Strong Sactown did an amazing training for our Local Conversation leaders on how Strong Sactown activates new members of its Local Conversation. She ended up doing that a very similar session at our National Gathering, and I had an orientation call with somebody today who's starting a group, who was at that at Alyssa's session at the National Gathering, and she is using that same model to start up her Local Conversation in Athens, Ohio. And so we have great capacity on our team, but because every community is different, because we have these 1100 people who are learning and trying new things, we're learning from them all the time, and there are tons of opportunities for them to teach others. And now it's even becoming more formal. One of our leaders, Kip Santos, has actually volunteered to mentor, in a more formal relationship, somebody who's who is starting up a Local Conversation. This is something that we have talked as a staff about wanting to do, but haven't had the capacity to do it yet. Kip's like, "I'll just do it." And that is the spirit of the Local Conversation leaders community, "I'll just do it, let me try it." And then we'll learn from what Kip is doing.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  14:58  

Yeah. It really serves as yet another example of the power of bottom-up change. And bottom-up is one of the ways in which we assure ourselves that various experiments can be tested. The ones that fail are the ones that we just either don't talk about, "Oh, that did not work well," or we learn from that experience and actually either suggest the improvement or we say, "Hey, but another group over here has done something really cool." The group in Portland, for example, they have a welcoming team. It's their most popular committee of something that people can sign up for. And as a result, they've always ensured that newcomers have a great welcoming experience when they walk in. And I'd never even thought about that, but I am totally stealing that. That, to me, is actually something we need local leaders for their cities to take note of. "Oh, let's borrow that. They tried this experiment. Let's see how it goes. Let's track what's going on and do the small things and really make that happen." This could be much longer, but I want to ask you, John, as we come to a close, what is it that gives you hope?

John Pattison  16:05  

You know, it would be easy for me to say the whole Local Conversations program, and that is true, but it's kind of a boring answer. I will actually go back to where we started in this conversation, and that is the orientation calls that I do. In our team Slack to our 16 colleagues, I'll often say, "If you ever get discouraged or ever forget why you're doing day in, day out, the work that you're doing, come hang out with me at an orientation." Even with the new member orientations that you and I do. Like, "Come hang out at a new member orientation. Meet the people that Norm and I get to meet on a regular basis and hear their stories." I start every orientation call with the same question. I say, "How did you hear about Strong Towns? What is your Strong Towns origin story?" Even if the broad outline is the same -- "Oh, I was watching Not Just Bikes and they gave you a shout out" -- the individual story is very, very different. And the theme that comes up is love. It turns out that there is this huge number of people out there who love their local communities. And because I get to experience that with a new person four to eight times a week, it gives me a lot of hope for this movement. It gives me a lot of hope for our local communities. I will go as far as to say this, and I'll put this on me, because I don't know if I have, like, a broad permission to share. I met with Chuck, with our Chief of Staff Carlee, and with our board chair. In May, we met in Denver to talk about the state of Local Conversations program and what what needed to be tweaked to make it even more effective. How we were going to add more staff to help, which we now have. The four of us are talking, and somebody said, and the rest of us agreed, that we can now imagine a time where Strong Towns the organization no longer needs to exist, because the Strong Towns approach has become the default approach to how we build and how we grow in our cities. You know, it may be 15, 20, years off still, but the reason we can see that future is because, in large measure, of our Local Conversations making this real in their places. And every week, I get to meet a new group of people, all of these new individuals , who are saying, "I want that in my town." That, to me, is very, very hopeful.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  19:19  

And if you want to be a part of this, definitely head to strong towns.org/local. That's where we have two options for you. One is check the map, because there probably is a group that is somewhat close to you or perhaps already in your community. And then the second option is, with our support and on your timeline, you can actually get going in starting a group. In most cases, there are already other individuals who have already signed up to get a group going. They just need you to come along, take them by the hand, and together, you're going to do that work, and we will support you. We provide training, we put you in touch with even better trainers than us to connect you with great resources, and that's a key part of what we are doing to build out not just a network, but a whole groundswell of bottom-up change that's really taking hold. And so with that, thank you so much for joining me, John, on Bottom-Up Shorts today.

John Pattison  20:18  

Absolutely. Yeah, thanks for having me. This is fun. I can't believe this is the first time we've done this.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  20:21  

Well, I know, and you've actually now done the quadfectra, I guess it would be, which would be the Bottom-Up podcast, Upzoned, the Strong Towns Podcast, and now finally, the young cousin, Bottom-Up Shorts. So glad to have you on, John. To everybody that's listening, just go out there. Take note of the needs in your community that you can begin to address in small, humble, but significant ways. As you do, take care and take care of your places.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  20:51  

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.