Norm Van Eeden Petersman  0:00  

Hello and welcome to Bottom-Up Shorts. I'm Norm with Strong Towns, and I get to connect with hundreds, if not 1000s of Strong Towns members and members of our Local Conversation groups all over North America and increasingly in other parts of the world. One of the things that keeps coming up is that sense of "I've got to tell you about so and so." Today, my guest is Judith Rognli, who is the leader of Strong Towns WashCo in St George, Utah. She is also the program director for Conserve Southwest Utah, and is a certified bike mechanic and a mom and a parent volunteer in so many different facets of her community. She previously was a bicycle mechanic and a location director for the Salt Lake City Bicycle Collective, and has been in the thick of seeking to bring about changes in transportation systems, thinking carefully about, how to make really good use of the scarce resources that we have, which is truly at the heart of conservation and at the heart of community building as well. So Judith, welcome to Bottom-Up Shorts.

Judith Rognli  1:11  

Thank you so much for having me, Norm. I'm really happy to talk to you today.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  1:16  

I'm really excited about this, and I wanted to ask to begin, can you describe the work of starting up a Local Conversation? And then, maybe making it a two-fold question, how does that also connect with what you're doing with Conserve Southwest Utah?

Judith Rognli  1:29  

Yeah, so I learned about Strong Towns in about 2017 or 2018, so a few years ago, while I was location director for the bicycle collective here in St George. I was thinking a lot about active transportation. We were giving bikes to people who didn't have transportation. I was riding my bike all over the place myself as a mom, pulling my little kiddo in a trailer. So I thought a lot about infrastructure, and I felt like giving a bike to people isn't really enough. We need to think about the bigger picture. We need to think about bike lanes and safe transportation and things like that. I talked to a lot of people about that, and they said to me, "Well, this is America. This is not Germany, where you're from. We don't have that much bike infrastructure." And I was like, "Ah, no, that can't be." So I started researching, and I found out about Strong Towns, and I found out that there are a lot of great advocates in the United States who are working towards building active transportation infrastructure and sustainable cities. So, long story short, I'd known about Strong Towns for a long time, and then started working for Conserve Southwest Utah as a program director for what's called the Desert Livability Program. And it's all about advocating for Smart Growth principles in the community. So there's, again, a strong overlap with Strong Towns, and I had this group of people, and we're sitting together once a month, and we're like, "Oh god, how do we put these ideas into action?" That was in 2023, 2024, and I remembered Strong Towns, and I said, "Let us sign up to become a Strong Towns Local Conversation, because Strong Towns is all about helping local citizens to put good ideas into action and to do solution oriented work in their communities. So that's what I did, and I guess that's the connection between my work for Conserve Southwest Utah and Strong Towns. Since then, we've kind of decoupled Strong Towns a little bit from my program, because we decided that it takes more than a village. It's a broad effort, and Washington County is large and growing. So, with a group of two other people, we started fostering this as a coalition of people, leaders from different organizations and from different communities here in Washington County.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  4:07  

I love that. Can you describe some of your meetups?

Judith Rognli  4:11  

Yeah, so we started having Strong Towns conversations open to the public in January, February this year, I believe. Usually we invite a speaker. We had an elected official who's really fostering Strong Towns principles in the community. She's a avid Strong Towns supporter, so we had her come in and explain to us what that looks like as an elected official, how she works, and how we can support her. Our last conversation was with the water conservation manager from the Water Conservancy District, which was really interesting. We're in the desert and water is a big topic. And again, what brings it into Strong Towns, was the question that we asked him: "How does water resource planning work, and what can we, as normal people on the ground, do to support the efforts that are that are underway?"

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  5:17  

Yeah, that's powerful. It reminds me of a quote I've been using quite a bit recently by Brent Todarian, that we really need to shift from "predict and provide," where we create models and those models then tell us what we need to provide to our community, to an earlier stage, which is "decide and provide." That decision is, what do we value? What is it that we cherish in our spaces? What is it that we foresee for ourselves, not just now, but also like going forward? It means that we don't have to take as given that, like, our current acquisition of property and our current sort of sprawl is at this pace, so we can predict that it will continue at pace, our continued sort of increase of water demands, as well as increasing water scarcity, is going to drive us to these decisions, so more costly infrastructure. Well, what if we reconsider development patterns? What if we can give people opportunities to say, "I can envision myself living in a space, being able to navigate on a bicycle or walking around and actually get more of the benefit of being in St George or in neighboring communities" and doing that together. And that's where I think there is such a powerful overlap between the conservation world -- broadly, there's decades now of conservation efforts -- and what we're trying to do as we think about Strong Towns. When you say, "conserve southwest Utah," what are some of the things that are core to that work?

Judith Rognli  6:47  

So core to the work of Conserve Southwest Utah are the four program areas that we have. We have a public lands program that is about public lands and conservation. We have a stewardship program that operates in tandem with that. They do great work going out into the field. They've done a huge study with wildlife cameras, where they've collected and combed through just hours and hours of footage of wildlife in this area. Then we have a water program, and we have the Desert Livability Program, which is the program that I am building and managing. That is about fostering Smart Growth principles and sustainable land use and transportation planning, really.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  7:34  

What is a wise way to live in the desert?

Judith Rognli  7:37  

Oh, that is a great question. I think a wise way to live in the desert is, like you said, one that is aware of the limited resources that we have here. We need to live very wisely. We need to use our water resources very wisely. We need to think about our footprint very wisely. This is one of the the core messages for me. Growth is a major topic here. We're growing. Washington County is anticipating to grow to double in size within the next few decades. To me, the question is really how we grow. It's not whether we grow, it's how we grow that really matters. We can really think about the footprint of our urban areas, the footprint of our homes, the water footprint. Living wisely in the desert, I would say, is considering the impact that the way we grow has on our environment, and that's a really beautiful thing. I think that's really one thing that living in the desert has really made clear to me too. I moved here from northern Germany. It's all forest and definitely no vast vistas. It's flat. You can't see, you know, past your neighbor's house, really. There's trees, which is beautiful. Then being here and biking everywhere and biking over the bluffs, you have these incredible views across the county and across these areas, which is so incredibly beautiful for somebody coming from from Europe. I had never experienced vistas like that. You also see how development is carving into these deserts and into our hillsides. We are seeing that right now where really beloved mountain biking trails and hiking trails are impacted by development decisions that were made 30 years ago. The positive of this is that people right now are stepping up and they're coming together, and they're asking, "What can we do to prevent something like that from happening in another 30 years?" So moving to the desert has really opened my eyes to these bigger processes and bigger decisions. It's a really interesting question, actually.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  10:17  

Yeah, it's really powerful. It reminds me of how the historic preservation movement arose when people recognized that entire neighborhoods were being demolished with bulldozers and wrecking balls. There's not been a similar level, I would say, of that recognition that our place needs to be preserved. Some of that is like, what are these core natural features that we should have in our communities? And your comments about living in the desert also struck me. I've been reading an awesome book by Sam Bloch, B, L, O, C, H, called "Shade." It's a historic, scientific and cultural study of the value of shade and the ways in which the advent of modern air conditioning sidelined that and the massive, profound implications that this has. It was the first time that I recognized, and I should have known this, he said, not everything, in say, a desert context, is going to require shade by trees. Sometimes you're building shade through other types of structures, but we've made that impossible. We've made that so difficult. So you think, what is a good street? Well, we should take our cues from, like the bluff, where all of a sudden you find yourself in that shade and there's life. Wow. We can learn from that. We can build that into our communities. Even things like, which ways did the Spanish versus the British orient their city plazas? Were they east-west, directly on the cardinals, or were they at a 45 degree angle? I'm like, "Whoa!" I didn't know this, and I'm fascinated by it. It sounds like you're deep into this, and I just find that fascinating.

Judith Rognli  11:54  

Yes, I share that fascination so much. I'm a social scientist by training. I worked in research in Germany, and did qualitative research. So I'm very curious and interested in learning. I'm always interested in the micro of human nature and how we interact, and how that is influenced by the macro, and that's where the built environment comes in. What you're just saying about shade, about trees, about buildings, I mean, that's the rabbit holes that I started going down when I started thinking about urban planning. Yes, with the advent of air conditioning here as well, we started building in ways that don't take these things into consideration anymore. Houses here that were built prior to the 1960s had, thinking about the interior as well, the windows were different and oriented differently. Then after 1960, everything's kind of built without awareness for the desert environment that we're building in, and it shows. So, of course, the question that we're thinking about is what can we do to support shifts moving us back in a direction where we're building urban spaces with more of an awareness for those factors?

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  13:16  

Yeah. Our summers are nothing close to the heat that you experience, but I certainly feel that, like, if I'm walking on a sidewalk and there's a street tree, I will base my route based on whether or not I'm likely to get some relief. Then asking those questions together, how do we do that broadly and begin to cultivate that sense of taking notice, not just of where the good mountain biking or recreational trails are, but where are the core roots in our community that are dignified, that are honorable, that are that are good for people. When you do that, when we begin to put in that small amount of investment into those things, because it actually doesn't have to be monumental amounts of investment, you can really begin to see a shift. I love that. So you describe yourself on LinkedIn as a program manager, social scientist and musician. Could just share a little bit more? As we think of profiling individuals in our Strong Towns movement, I want to ask, who are you and how did you become this person?

Judith Rognli  14:12  

Let's see. So, yes, program manager, we talked about briefly for Conserve Southwest Utah. The way I describe how I landed there is merging from social sciences via the bicycle collective into this field of urban planning. It was a gradual merge. Conserve Southwest Utah was looking for somebody. I had volunteered with the organization. The current person who was heading up the Desert Livability efforts moved. And then they asked me, "Would you be interested in leading this effort?" And I said, "Yes, I would love to." So that's how I merged into this field, which is really exciting. I absolutely love it. What was the second one I had in there?

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  14:58  

Social scientist, and then third is musician.

Judith Rognli  15:02  

Yep, so social sciences right there. Then musician, yeah, I play the violin. I play in a duo with a singer-songwriter. That's a really important part of me and what I do. I love having music as an outlet to be authentic, to say what I want to say, and again, to build community. We're local here. We perform at, you know, our next performance is like the local Pride festival, things like that. Music is such an important part of the local fabric of a town. I love playing music. I love the presence and the connection that it creates. It's something that's falling a little bit through the cracks at the moment, which I'm really sad about, because I'm also in a training with the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy. So again, advancing my urban planning knowledge, which is super exciting, but I'm trying to juggle those things, because music is my creative outlet there.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  16:07  

Yeah, and that certainly is a common theme. Several of the folks that I have had on say "I'm juggling many things, but finding joy in doing that." You had previously used as your title, just "I care," and I love that. I think that speaks to next question, which I love to ask folks. What is it that gives you hope in your community?

Judith Rognli  16:33  

Well, two things give me hope. One is, over the last two years especially, I have started working and getting to know better a lot of elected officials and people working in public service, and I started really learning that there are so many other people who care and who are trying to build strong communities, who have a vision. Some have a vision. Some don't have a clear vision, but people really care about their community here, and about Washington County and the communities and the neighborhoods we have, and that's really fantastic. The other thing is seeing the momentum that we're starting to experience with people engaging on the ground. For me, in these times, hope really comes from focusing on what we can do locally. I think we forget that, and people also engage really reluctantly. I just had a conversation last week that was really interesting. Somebody called me as a follow-up from our water event. He said to me, "You know, I really don't want to be engaging. I don't want to be doing this." I understand that perspective. However, at the same time, coming from Germany, I am a firm believer in civic engagement. It's something I'm really passionate about, I really care about. I think it's always necessary. It's necessary no matter where we are. I'm not from here. People often ask me, "Why do you engage in Washington County?" For me, wherever I'm at, I will be an active participant of society. Finding others and finding more and more others who do the same thing, you start waking up to it. It's not the doomscrolling on Facebook or whatever. There are people on the ground who care. Let's make something happen together locally. Yeah, that gives me hope and gets me excited.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  18:42  

Honestly, I love that. That is perfect way to wrap up here. Thank you, Judith, for being our guest on Bottom-Up Shorts. I'm so glad to be able to introduce you and the work that you're doing with Strong Towns WashCo in the St George area, as well as Conserve Southwest Utah, and continuing in that pattern of helping communities with the resources that they have to build strong communities. If you're listening to this, if you ever pass through St George, definitely look for many of the evidences of the work that these groups are doing. But also take an opportunity in your community to take note, where are things that you can be engaged in, even if you don't want to, even if you feel like, "Ah, I just don't know that I have the time for it." Actually, there are some great, compelling things that you can take up together with others in your community. You're not alone. The reality is also you're not too late. There is a tremendous opportunity ahead of us. With that, thank you so much for listening to this episode of Bottom-Up Shorts. Take care and take care of your places.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  19:46  

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.