When Does Listening Become Taking Part?

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  0:00

Hello and welcome to a special Member Week edition of Bottom Up Shorts. I'm Norm. This week we're celebrating the Strong Towns movement, and I want to have a conversation with you about what this movement is really about and why it matters. But first, there's something I've been wondering about. I'm genuinely curious about what connects you to this podcast. What brings you back to the bottom-up revolution feed each week?

What is it about these conversations that speaks to something that you're experiencing in your own community? Because here's something interesting: we actually have more people listening to this podcast every month than we have current members of Strong Towns, and I find that fascinating and really rewarding. It means that the interviews and the discussions that Tiffany has, and that I've been able to have with people within the Strong Towns world, really are providing value to you. There's a whole community of us together who listen. We learn.

We're thinking about our cities and towns, and I think it's quite possible we're seeing our own places differently because of what we hear. That's really cool. That's really powerful. And I hope each week that you're like, "Oh, there's a new episode. I can't wait to listen to it because I definitely have an opportunity to think about my place a little bit differently afterwards." But have we stopped to think about what it means to be part of the movement itself. Who's in this movement? It's everybody. It's our elected leaders. It's our technical professionals.

But especially the biggest mass of people that are participating in what Strong Towns is seeking to do, driving this paradigm shift in the way that we view our communities and the problems that we face, we together, the vast majority of us, are concerned citizens. Now, I honor you if you are an elected leader or if you're technical professional. But in particular, I want to thank all of our concerned citizens. You're listening. You're sharing in this.

You're building up your own repertoire of easy responses to people, of things to note for others, and that really matters. That's where this movement brings us: thinking about how do we build lasting prosperity for the places that we call home. When we talk about building Strong Towns, we're talking about a pretty fundamental shift in how we think our communities ought to grow. Tied into that is how do we make decisions?

Think of many of the episodes that we've heard this year about people grappling with the decision-making processes in their community and injecting new ideas, new approaches, new messaging in order to make that possible. But a common thread has been about that sense of responsibility for the future of our places. I think being a Strong Towns member makes me doubly responsible for my community.

As a resident, as a citizen, as someone who walks the community, I love many of the things that make my home a great place to call home. I experienced that recently. I got to vote in a recent municipal election, and really felt that sense of connection to my place.

And it was awesome to see so many other people walking over to the polling station to exercise their ability to vote in our community, but tied to that, then I also feel like I have this added obligation to do what I can to make my town a strong town, and I feel that there are moments, especially I remember before I became a strong town's member, where it was like this is so interesting, this is so on the nose of what we need to be dealing with, but it was as a member that I was like, oh, I really feel responsible now, and it's a responsibility that sits heavy at times, especially when you see things not going the way that you hope they would.

Some of our very top-down sort of orderly systems continuing to squeeze out the options that we need to be instilling in our places, but other times I'm like, oh, we're starting to see that paradigm shift.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  4:10

We're starting to see that opportunity emerge for us to actually have meaningful conversations about our long-term obligations and that grappling that's ongoing about how do we create enough resources to be able to meet our ongoing obligations? What about these questions and the responsibility they create for us? The moment we ask, "Can we afford to maintain what we're building?" it carries an obligation to say, if we can't, we have problems, so let's head off those problems earlier rather than later.

Does this investment make our community stronger over time, or is the hype not worth the long-term cost? Are we making life better for people who already live here? Sometimes I connect with people that live in communities that are really oriented around tourism, and I think a lot of our other places mimic this in their own way. They feel this place caters to people who are not from here, and yet we need to make life better for the people who are already living here.

Housing options for people who already live here, great parks and improved public spaces for people who already live here, investment strategies and small business improvement efforts that help the people already invested here, making our places stronger. Do we give ourselves flexibility to adapt when our needs change? Think of that in our current context, where it feels like a lot of big trends are locked in, and we are on a train on a set of tracks that is going in a direction that we're not totally sure is where we want to be going.

Wouldn't it be important for us to be an early voice to say, "Hey, let's give ourselves the flexibility to adapt when our needs change." We recently did an Ask Strong Towns Anything session with Graham Watt, who is a disaster preparation expert in Grand Forks, British Columbia. And one of the things that stood out to me, he said we can definitely talk about how to rebuild and how to recover after disasters, but he said the number one thing that we are working towards in terms of making our community resilient is the person-to-person networks that are so valuable in our places.

And person-to-person networks already exist. These are the people that you make eye contact with and realize you have a connection with them, but deeper than that, he said, what I see is those connections, if they include even a passing thought of how you and I can support each other when disaster does come, that's when we know that we're actually going to be ready, even if we don't have you know the dump trucks ready or the sandbags prepared.

Even if those things were to catch us off guard, we have greater confidence that we can recover and keep our community as strong as it might be in the midst of a trying time, when we have those connections together. And that's where that strong town's conversation matters. Even when you bring it in, say you're in a bridge club and you have a brief side comment about strong towns ideas, that can begin to create this nested conversation.

Over time, people will come back to and say, "Hey, you brought that up. Let's talk about that a little bit further, because we're not simply debating technical approaches to urban development with all of the acronyms and jargon that goes with that. We're saying how do we build places that can endure, that can adapt, and then provide a really good life for the people who call them home.

So one of the most important things about strong towns is the belief that meaningful change is going to happen closest to home. We are accustomed to looking upward for solutions. We wait for new policies. We watch and wonder what the next major funding announcements are going to look like. We hire out consultants that basically deliver prepackaged, a new comprehensive plan for our community.

We look for someone in a position of authority to make the right decision. Somebody do something, and that matters.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  8:30

We do want somebody to do something, but I think what's also powerful is how a bottom-up approach begins with an understanding of how change happens. To start with what we can see, is not to be blinded by what we can see. That's often the critique, isn't it? Oh, you're just blinded by what you can see, but like the real problem is deeper than that, or it's more complicated than that.

I'm always like, let's first start with what's not working, and then identify how do we help the people, including ourselves, who experience that problem on a daily or more frequent basis? How do we help people to then identify what's that next smallest thing that we can do to improve our community? That's really stood out to me in the interviews that we've done already, and I'll say, especially for those that are new to join as members, when I get to meet you in our new member welcome sessions, many times I'm like, "Oh, this is a unique story!

I can't wait to share this on the Strong Towns Bottom Up Shorts podcast." And so, look for that. There will be more opportunities like that because you're somebody that notices things. You're somebody that asks questions. You're somebody that's able to start building relationships. And over time, all of those small acts are what is makes change possible in our places. And so, one of the things that we want to do is really help people who feel isolated.

If you feel like you are still just yelling into the wind, it can be discouraging to ask questions that don't seem welcome or to challenge the assumptions that everyone else appears to accept. That's hard. That's challenging. We hear that even when I ask each guest on the podcast, "What gives you hope?" it's often set against the reality that not everything is filling us with hope right now, and it's easy to lose confidence in that context. And that's where a movement is so necessary.

A movement is what changes that experience for us, where we realize we're not alone, and crucially, we're not too late. It's that reminder we are actually not too late to address the challenges that we face, they've gotten bigger over time, but doesn't mean that we're too late, and we're definitely not alone. The strength of strong towns is that it is built on a shared commitment to building places that have financial capacity, and then are physically safe and socially well connected. And so, what does that look like? What does it mean to participate in this movement?

Well, during Member Week, you can become a member. I would love for you to take that on as just a small challenge for yourself. Behind every membership is a person who says, "Yep, I'm ready. I'm ready to back these ideas, even if I'm still learning about them, and to see them shared through the broader network of Strong Towns tools that we are putting into place." That's where we want to put all of that together.

And so, out of that, one of the things that I want to invite you to do is go and head to strongtowns.org/membership. Actually, if you just go to our site, strongtowns.org this week, it'll show you right away how to join as a member. Joining as a member means that you commit with us to this ongoing work of strengthening our places, and I do think we have some very distinctive resources and ways of thinking about it that will help you in your place.

And every week we talk through the challenges that people are facing, and we give thought to how do we share this with others? How do we convince the curmudgeons in our lives? How do we encourage the newbies who are just like, "I'm interested, but I don't know where to start". We provide support and assistance and help in all of these things, and membership makes that possible.

And so, joining as a member looks like making a financial commitment to Strong Towns, but at the core, it's deeper than that, isn't it? It's just saying like, yeah, I want this to exist.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman  12:39

Yes, I want this in my place, and yes, I want to be a member. It doesn't mean that you are suddenly going to unlock the treasure trove of 18 specific member benefits. There are benefits, absolutely, but we don't lead with that. We want the commitment to be front and center, be part of what we're doing, and so I started with curiosity. What's the hook?

What's the interest level that keeps you regularly catching episodes of our podcast? I'd love to hear that. Email me at [email protected]. Sign up as a member and email me would be even cooler. Go ahead and take that moment again. And when you do, I know that you are part of a movement, and this movement needs you. We need you together. I think you need us, and so I hope that as you do so, what we can do together will help you take care of your places.

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