Evan Clark and Natalie Eger are college students studying sociology in Lexington, Virginia, and they came back from the 2025 National Gathering in Providence, RI fired up to do something. In the past year they've built a thriving local conversation group, turned a city council member into a regular at their monthly meetings, and had a broken sidewalk fixed fourteen days after they flagged it. They walk through how they started from scratch, made real change at the local level, and kept people showing up month after month.
Hello, and welcome to Bottom Up Shorts. I'm Norm from Strong Towns, and I'm excited to be able to connect with so many different people that are taking steps in each of their communities to advance a Strong Towns idea of what it takes to build lasting prosperity where we live. A key part of that work is the establishment of ongoing conversations about these ideas, and direction of individuals to say, hey, how do I put these things into action where we live?
Today I'm joined by Evan Clark and Natalie Eger of Strong Towns Lexington, a new local conversation group that is in Lexington, Virginia, doing great work out there. Evan and Natalie, welcome.
Hello, thanks for having us.
Thank you so much.
I love to just hear what it's like leading a local conversation group, and what are some of the things that you've been really struck by as having an impact where you live.
It's been absolutely thrilling and exhilarating, almost like a roller coaster that we hopped on after the national gathering last year in June. We attended in Providence and were deeply empowered by all the stories of other groups and conversation leaders just biting the bullet and starting a conversation, taking that leap of faith, trusting that there were people interested in these topics — these super important topics about the built environment in their locality.
We saw how powerful the language of new urbanism really is for giving name to a lot of the problems and recurring patterns and issues that people notice in their daily life, and thought that Lexington could gain a lot from having those words on screen and in people's minds when they're making decisions about our shared future. We saw those gaps in our infrastructure back home and in our city and felt that Strong Towns was the perfect movement and dialog to meet the needs at the exact time, and so we brought that momentum back after the national gathering and really just kept that going — started this wild ride.
Natalie, in Lexington, what are some of the issues that you and the group have been focused on?
It's been really cool to dig into all of the issues that Lexington comes across and what impact we can have as temporary residents of the town. We're students, but starting this local conversation has given us an opportunity to get very embedded in the town. We've done a lot of work with our local government, and it's been super rewarding to learn about those structures and how we can use our group collaboration to get things done and bridge the gaps between the everyday experiences in these spaces that we all have and the people who make decisions about those spaces. That's certainly been very rewarding, and something the group has done continuously over the past year.
I sometimes get people that ask, so what exactly do local conversations get up to? Where do they meet? Do they meet in somebody's home? What does that look like for y'all?
These details are super important. From the very start, before our first monthly meeting, we wanted to have a place that was going to be reliable and flexible, and a place that was accessible for as many people as possible. We decided we want to have meetings on the second Wednesdays of the month. We did check the local calendars to see when different public meetings were, such as the school board, the planning commissions, and city councils, and tried not to overlap, so we can get as many people that are interested in the room.
We said the local library is the best room. It has a meeting room, right in central downtown — the perfect setup. Having that consistent date, time, and location set, which we have held to for almost a year, has really allowed us to build that momentum and get people to keep coming back and make time to have us in their schedule. There's a city council member that has been a consistent, regular attendee, and he says he went ahead and made time in his calendar for twelve Strong Towns local conversations a year. Having that ability to carve out time and space for these conversations that don't usually get to happen in our city has been really meaningful.
Exactly, and to jump off of that — we really saw a direct need for these types of open conversations shaped by everyone in the room. It's a different group of people every time we talk, but again, as we've mentioned, we've attended a lot of public meetings. We found that the public comment period left a lot to be desired, and we thought it would be a great opportunity to use our space to further those conversations that we could feel people wanted to have.
By keeping a pretty strong structure, we've noticed that it's really allowed us to expand our network and create a dedicated, consistent network of community members who continue to keep showing up. It's really cool that occasionally we'll have a break and not be in town, and people are always like, "Oh no, we really want to have that." Just knowing that those conversations are needed and wanted in Lexington, and that we get to facilitate that for people, is really great.
That consistent monthly meeting structure allowed us to be more flexible and innovative and creative in our non-monthly meetings. From the very start, we knew the monthly meetings were always going to be part of our process, but we wanted to have more flexible additional events that could further turn our conversations into action, in a way that is based on what we deem is the most urgent, important thing to be addressed right now.
In our non-monthly meetings, as local conversation leaders, we set the internal goal of having one a month, and trying something new each month. One month we were doing a walk audit, and then the very next month we're doing a financial decoding open house at a coffee shop, and then the next month we are doing a bike workshop, and then we're volunteering at Habitat for Humanity as a group, just continuing to take risks in doing events we've never done before.
We get creative and sort of melt the activities to whatever we talk about — we discuss them oftentimes at our local conversation meeting that month. It's almost like a mini field trip for whoever wants to attend. We've put a lot of emphasis into flyering, so we flyer downtown and on campus just to consistently reach out to the community and keep everyone engaged, and really lower that barrier to entry for people in the city of Lexington. The jurisdiction lines are really complicated, so we've had a lot of fun digging into and knocking down those barriers between county lines, city lines, people affiliated with the schools, people not affiliated with the schools. It's been really great.
I was going to say that I'm jealous, first of the fact that you have a library that is regularly available. In my city, for some reason the fees to rent a room are quite high, and so that's been a real barrier for us. I'm jealous of the fact that you've got a council member that has just made a point of putting that into their calendar and finding value in what you are doing, so that their work as a council member is improved by participating in and supporting the work that you're doing.
I'm also amazed by — I love that rhythm of having the regular meetup, but then also those additional opportunities to gather and do something constructive, and move the needle. From a Strong Towns perspective, the deep value is that moving the needle actually looks like small, incremental moves in the right direction rather than having to muscle down and figure everything out all at once and get it to a completed state. I find that really powerful.
But how did you become the people that are doing this? I love origin stories. What was it that made you realize, I'm going to go to a national gathering of Strong Towns in Providence, and then also take this on in my community?
As Evan mentioned, we came back really inspired from the National Gathering, but this organization is a manifestation of long-term passions for both of us. Every year we've been digging more and more into urbanism and new urbanism. We also attended CNU in Providence over the summer, and that was a really rewarding experience where we got to learn more and expand ourselves into the field. We both love cities, and it's just been the best to be able to enact this on our starting-out
scale. We both study sociology and social network analysis at our university, and we saw a lot of the ways that systems-level thinking leads to paradigm shifts in how we relate to the built environment. I've said this before, and I'll say it again: we can't wait for every election to use a voice and show how much we care about a space and make the future that we want for future generations — and for the present.
Combining really persistent and targeted advocacy over the problems that we do see — such as one problem that we didn't really notice until we were starting to attend public meetings and getting deeper into city councils — is that there are in many ways disconnects between the different institutions in our localities, and between local governments themselves, even though there is such a symbiotic relationship at the core. We're not really maximizing all that potential.
Getting all these different people's perspectives in the room, and never turning anyone away because they live in a certain location or represent a certain institution or not — we are intentional about being objective in that way. We go beyond the ideals of being nonpartisan and nonprofit in the most beautiful ways that Lexington was really yearning for. The city council members that show up, city officials, county representatives, elected officials — they love seeing students and young people entering the room and
being engaged, showing how much they care about the town. They've said this to us: we learn a lot from each other — us from them, and them from us. No one can know a whole space just by themselves. Everyone's individual personal experience enriches our overall conception.
One of our proudest achievements as an organization in the past year: one of our non-monthly activities was a walk audit of a section of downtown. We were looking at a recently installed bike lane and adjustment to the sidewalk, and it was really wonderful. We had a group of people just soaking in the space, soaking in how they felt in the space, and we strolled down to our park, then walked back. On the way down we noticed a breach in the sidewalk connectivity of Lexington, and it was really something that struck us.
Four days later we hosted our local conversation meeting specifically on connectivity — identifying this gap, talking about it, and making our case for why it's so important to have uninterrupted sidewalk all the way from the center of town to this park that is an amazing amenity and has been part of the town's history and urban fabric since its creation. Fourteen days later, our wonderful city councilor and the Lexington city planner — who and whose family have been very supportive of our endeavors — took this to the city manager. They thought it was valuable, made a deal with public works, and they built the sidewalk fourteen days later. We got to bike over and see it right there. They cut the curb and added an additional attachment segment. Being able to make such a concrete — literally concrete — change in such a short period of time, this was in October, was really, really special.
That's so cool, because it really demonstrates that these are not changes that are asking for the moon to be delivered. It's not something that is completely radical. It's actually doing the small but necessary work of saying, where is there a gap? How do we address that gap? And then, with tools we already have and skills we already possess, just actually committing to doing the work. I appreciate that unity of bringing together those that have the concrete, those that have the technical ability, those that have the approving power, and those that have the ability to tell the story of why this matters. I can see already how that would have been a big win and a big encouragement for the group.
Do you want to share maybe some tips or suggestions for other people to keep their tank filled, or to stay encouraged and equipped by this kind of work? It's easy to get discouraged. How do you find the energy for this? You both seem energized by it. Any suggestions on that front?
It's really relying on the networks — the social networks, the people that make up this movement. What projects get done or not, what achievements we actually bring to fruition — it's the people that truly keep this ball rolling.
We're in Europe right now, so actually that's part of refueling our tank. Something that we both draw a lot of energy from is looking at spaces and people. There are some really beautiful nuggets of livability that we can see everywhere, and we can't always see them in the US with the way that we've been planning.
As Evan said, it's really the people that have kept us on this route, and they inspire us to keep going. Even being able to build this organization alongside Evan has been a really awesome experience. We are able to keep a lot of passion for the subject honestly just by talking between us and getting excited about all of the things that we're able to notice around us. Education is a core tenet of what we do — we want to educate and give people the words to express how they feel and what they think about these situations, but we're also being educated ourselves. We're putting a lot of the theory that we're learning academically right into our meetings. Evan recently wrote a capstone on car dependency, and we've used quite a few of his sources in monthly meetings over the past months.
Back to the people aspect — it's the networks that keep people going, because there's all this knowledge that is embedded in our history, and there are a lot of people that know so much about our town and its characteristics and its history, and have so many humming dreams for the future.
Having a lot of people interested definitely creates a lot of positive feedback loops to keep this going and keep people excited about what the future holds.
I'm excited for what the future holds for Lexington and for the Strong Towns Lexington group in particular. To reach out if you're interested in learning more, [email protected] is the group email — definitely go and check them out. Do you guys have a website as well, or is that still a work in progress?
The website is StrongTownsLexingtonVA.com. We love it existing as a community resource before anything else — as a way for people to understand what Strong Towns is even about, and then apply that to a lot of different local resources. We are all about building coalitions and collaborating, not competing, so we love promoting awesome opportunities such as volunteer opportunities, different city reports, or even reading the zoning codes, which are really important entry points.
Absolutely. We use the website itself as a resource — it's sort of Evan's masterpiece, but we have links to all sorts of ways you can educate yourself on the topic, as well as a calendar for all of our events. We keep it pretty regularly updated, so quite proud of that one.
That is awesome. One day I hope I can walk on that path and enjoy the fullness of the sidewalk and all of the things that you guys are accomplishing there. Keep it up. It's really encouraging, and I'm glad that we've had a chance to chat today.
Take note of what both Evan and Natalie are describing — they are taking those steps in their community out of a deep sense of tapping into the real skills and abilities that are present within the community, being able to identify where people are struggling and finding small but significant things that can be done to address that struggle. Thanks folks for listening to Bottom Up Shorts today. I appreciate your time. I hope that you are also encouraged — maybe go out, look for other people, start a local conversation, be inspired by what you hear happening not only in Lexington, but in so many other communities. Take care, and take care of your places.
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.