The Bottom-Up Revolution
Nick Frevold launched a Strong Towns Local Conversation in Huntsville, Alabama — and found more demand than he expected. He shares what it took to get started, build relationships, and turn concern into real momentum.
Transcript (Lightly edited for readability)
Hello and welcome to Bottom-Up Shorts. I'm Norm with Strong Towns, and today I'm joined by Nick Frevold. He is the leader of Strong Towns Huntsville in Huntsville, Alabama, and a local conversation leader that is taking action in his community. He works as a costume accessory seller online and is able to do that in addition to providing opportunities for people in the community to connect and to engage about Strong Towns challenges and the needs that are emerging within the community. He's also a candidate in the upcoming election in Huntsville, coming up in August. With that, Nick, welcome to Bottom-Up Shorts.
Hello. Thank you for having me.
I'd love to hear you describe the work of getting a local conversation started and what that has looked like for you.
Well, it was actually surprisingly easy. There was so much demand for a Strong Towns conversation here that I know there's at least, I think, four or five or even six other people who were interested in starting a conversation, but they just hadn't had the time to do it. When I announced that I was starting a local conversation, they were so excited. Our very first meeting, we actually had around 20 people show up, which was way more people than I expected for our very first conversation. So it was just connecting to people, talking to people, posting on social media about the event. That helped a lot get people to show up.
How did you phrase that first ask of people?
So surprisingly, a lot of people actually already knew what Strong Towns was, but to the people who didn't know, I explained there's a lot of focus on improving transit, improving bike lanes and building bottom-up.
I ask in part because it's interesting to learn from the other experiences and what people kind of use as a hook or as an intro or a way of bringing people out. But you're totally right that we have a growing list of communities where other people have already expressed interest in starting a local conversation. But maybe for them, it's in the "not yet" stage or their life circumstances have shifted, and they just said, "I can't take on an added obligation, but I'm definitely keen to show up."
So I love that your first experience of having that first meetup resulted in 20 people emerging and saying, "Hey, I also care about these issues and want to talk about them." Are some of the conversations maturing? Are you beginning to see some opportunities for action as well?
Yeah, so at our first meeting, two city leaders, a councilman and the city planner, actually showed up. One of them was already a fan of Strong Towns, and the other became a fan after the meeting. Our next meeting in February, we're going to have another councilwoman come to our meeting, and we're going to discuss mostly the new rapid bus transit line that's being proposed and other ways to improve the city and talk about the developments happening around the city.
So we've had a lot of good luck. The city is happy to talk with us. So we've been very lucky being in the city and having so much support from the city and people around here.
Yeah, and you've been talking about legalizing ADUs or accessory dwelling units or backyard cottages, allowing them to become commonplace throughout the city. Can you describe some of that effort?
So there was a very big push to legalize ADUs about three or four years ago, and it almost passed. But from what the city leaders have told me, basically at the last minute, they got a big push against it, and they listened to them, so they killed it.
That's one reason I started this Strong Towns local conversation: so there can be a supportive voice for ADUs. Because if the city only hears people against it, then they're going to kill it. But since we've started, we have such a growing list of members. Hopefully we can push for legalizing ADUs and actually get it passed this time.
Well, I think it stands out. One of the lines on the website is "Every neighborhood doesn't need tens of millions of dollars in building permits." I think this is one of those Strong Towns insights that's really captured a lot of people: No neighborhood should be exempt from change, but also no neighborhood should be subject to radical change, or what Daniel Herriges has described as the trickle or fire hose phenomenon. Either you're seeing just minuscule amounts of local investment, and then all of a sudden, the tap is opened and you get the fire hose effect.
Providing for opportunities for neighborhoods to thicken up and to mature and to create those opportunities. And then with that, I'd love your focus too, that it is also about allowing for people to walk freely and safely through neighborhoods and enjoy access to local retail without having to get in a vehicle, or make your way around the community in ways that really are local, really suit what it is that you need.
Do you want to describe maybe part of what is your vision for the group, and what are you hoping to accomplish as we now break into a new year?
The main focus is to not attack leaders or go against leaders, but to work with the leaders, because they have shown support for a lot of our messaging. So a big thing we're working on right now is identifying bus stops that don't have shelters, identifying bus locations that need improvement, so finding areas that need improvement and then showing it to the city and letting them know, "Hey, these are the places that need improvement."
Because it's one thing to just say a general "Oh, the bus system is bad. It needs improvement." We want to actually show these specific areas are where it needs improvement. So that's what we're kind of focused on most: bus transit.
Can you describe a little bit about your own background and what it is that sort of prepared you for this, but also what put Strong Towns on your radar and just a little bit of your backstory? Because I'm fascinated by the connection between building costume accessories and making it and selling it online, but also cultivating local community and helping people to get connected together in things that people are passionate about, but doing so in ways that also address things like safety and well-being. Can you share just a little bit about your own background and sort of the story that's brought you to today?
So I grew up in a small town in Alabama, and I did not like being in a small town. Even as a teenager, I did not want to drive a car. I wanted to bike everywhere. Even in the small town, I'd bike several miles just to get to the town.
So once I became an adult, I wanted to move to more of a city. Because I was in a small town, there's no jobs, so I created my own business selling online. That's how I started doing that. So I moved to Huntsville in 2018, and a big reason for the specific neighborhood I chose is because it's walking distance from a grocery store. Just recently, they built a second grocery store in this area, so I'm walking distance from two grocery stores, perfect for me.
That's a very important thing for me, personally: being able to walk and bike where I need to go. Because also in this neighborhood, I can bike 80% of the places I need to go. I can bike downtown. I can bike to the convention center. I can bike to the library. So my specific neighborhood is pretty well connected.
But Huntsville is a pretty big city, land-wise, and most of the city is not very walkable, not very bikeable. So I really want to see more connections, because there's other densely populated areas in Huntsville, like Mid City and Providence, but they're not really connected. There's not good connections. There's not good bike paths. There's not good bus transit. So I really want to see the densely populated areas of Huntsville more connected.
Was there something that put Strong Towns on your radar, maybe back in the day?
So I've always preferred biking, and I saw Not Just Bikes on YouTube, and he spoke to me. Everything he talked about, I already had in my head, but when I lived in a small town, people thought I was crazy. "You want to bike everywhere? That's crazy." But I was like, I had a vision. I want to live somewhere where I can bike everywhere I need to go.
When I saw Not Just Bikes on YouTube years later, I was like, "Oh, there's other people like me too. I'm not crazy. I'm not alone." So that introduced me to Strong Towns through Strong Towns videos. It's been years since I've known about it, but it finally became a good time for me to start my own local conversation.
My wife and stepdaughter moved here last year, and so now that they're here and settled in, I can focus more on the broader community. That's one reason why school zones, making it easier for kids to bike and walk to school, because now I have a kid who goes to school. I take her to school on the back of my cargo bike, and she loves it.
That's awesome. Yeah. It just underscores, you can think of Huntsville, you can think of any number of places in your region or further on, where you realize even within a lot of places that people assume no one walks there, no one bikes there, there's actually neighborhoods where it is very available. It is a choice, whether conscious or not, for that not to be the case in the rest of the city, and it is a choice that has real consequences. It's something that we can begin to address.
But I love that your response to folks is "Come along for a ride with me," or "Let me show you." I think it would be quite eye-opening to a lot of people to be able to experience the community in the way that your daughter is getting to experience it, and the way that others inspired by you probably will be as well.
Maybe that touches on a question I'd love to ask, which is: What is a suggestion or a tip that you have for others that are interested in doing similar things, maybe in the South or in other parts of the North American landscape?
I really like, it is kind of controversial, but I really like the Nextdoor app. Nextdoor website is, I think it's a lot better compared to something like Twitter, where it's all anonymous people. Being able to talk to local people, especially who have different ideas, being able to open up their mind to see what can be different.
So I usually go on Nextdoor and post there and try to let people know there's different ways things can happen. Different parts of the city are actually pretty walkable, because a lot of people will say, "Well, Huntsville, you have to own a car," which is true. You should probably own a car in Huntsville, but it's not necessary for every single trip in some neighborhoods. So just trying to open up people's mind of what we could have and how the city is actually improving to become more livable and walkable. It's not a lost cause.
Going to where the conversations are taking place. Sometimes that is, in my community, we have a Facebook group with 30,000 local residents in it. As much as it pains me at times just to see the way that the discourse sometimes happens which people are willing to do in their own names, at other times, I'm reminded I need to just be in those spaces. We also have a Nextdoor set up in our community that actually set up, in part, to try to take people into a space where we could, at the outset, be really positive about what was going on. Sadly, it didn't stay as positive as I hoped, but it's a good reminder: Go where the conversations are definitely occurring, and then bring it into real life. Or, I guess it's all real life, but into in-person conversations can definitely have an impact as well.
How about then, as we close, what's something that gives you hope in your community?
Seeing the city planners planning good stuff. There is some issue getting it actually implemented, but seeing that the city planners are actually planning really good stuff, that gives me a lot of hope. I think the future is very bright because of that.
We're in a growing city that's not afraid to build housing. That's one thing I'm pretty happy with Huntsville. They're not really afraid to build housing. Just seeing all the work that's being done in adding bike lanes and greenways and new buildings, seeing all the response, because nearly every meeting we have is around 15 to 20 people, and it's new people coming along each time. So just seeing all the people, all the support coming in, it makes me really hopeful for the future of Huntsville.
I really appreciate it. I think you're serving as a catalyst in your community, and that's so true to the vision of what the local conversations program is about and really the broader Strong Towns effort: to say we can begin to change the conversation, and when we do that, that will certainly have an impact.
So Nick, thank you for joining us on Bottom-Up Shorts today.
Yeah. Thank you. Really appreciate it.
If you want to check out what Nick and his fellow local conversation members are doing, check out strongtownshuntsville.org. That's their excellent website where they've built out a lot of informative material to help the community in Huntsville. I'm certain, with Nick's permission, you're welcome to help yourself to it and use it in your community as well, and continue to build bridges, build those connections, find those opportunities for the conversations to unfold that we know are so needed within our places.
With that, thanks for listening to this Bottom-Up Short. Take care and take care of your places.
The State of Strong Towns meeting is coming up, January 29. If you are already a Strong Towns member, consider this your invitation. You will receive the link and updates directly in your inbox. If you're not a member yet, now is the time to join at strongtowns.org/membership so you do not miss it. We will share where the movement stands, how it got here, and what lies ahead in 2026. We really want you there.