481.8K
Downloads
235
Episodes
This podcast features stories of the Strong Towns movement in action. Hosted by Tiffany Owens Reed, it’s all about how regular people have stepped up to make their communities more economically resilient, and how others can implement these ideas in their own places. We’ll talk about taking concrete action steps, connecting with fellow advocates to build power, and surviving the bumps along the way—all in the pursuit of creating stronger towns.
Episodes
Thursday Mar 03, 2022
Thursday Mar 03, 2022
Shelley Denison is a Strong Towns advocate and city planner in Sandy, Oregon, a town that’s going through some challenges that should be very familiar to you: concerns about traffic and congestion, questions about what it means to invite more housing into your city, and more.
As a city planner, Denison navigates these issues with a thoughtful and open mind. She’s been invested in clarifying, for instance, what allowing missing middle housing would actually mean for her community (more housing options, and not developers bulldozing your neighborhood, as some residents fear).
Denison sees city planning as fundamentally about relationship with residents, and she’s dedicated to what she calls “communicative planning,” that genuinely takes into account the needs and concerns of those who live in her town. In this interview, you’ll hear Denison’s nuanced take on the YIMBY/NIMBY debate, her experience hosting a housing-related podcast, and her dedication to fighting cynicism in the planning field.
Additional Show Notes
-
Check out Shelley Denison’s podcast, At Home in Oregon.
-
Join the Strong Towns Facebook group.
-
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
-
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.
Thursday Feb 24, 2022
Thursday Feb 24, 2022
The Asheville Bench Project is a very grassroots, incremental, small-bet approach to making Asheville a little more livable, a little more people-friendly.
Today’s guest is choosing to remain anonymous (find out why in the episode). He was watching his neighbors stand out in the hot sun, the rain, the cold, waiting for their buses at utterly neglected patches of sidewalk, with cars whizzing past, and not even a place to sit while they waited. So he took matters into his own hands and started building benches and installing them at bus stops.
He didn’t ask permission or go through a permitting process. He just saw a problem and started addressing it. His effort, which is only a couple months old, has already grown into a project with multiple volunteers, positive feedback from bus riders, and some local businesses starting to get involved.
For the founder of the Asheville Bench Project, this effort is about more than simply providing a place for a weary rider to sit. It’s also about drawing attention to how the city has neglected to do this work itself. Eleven percent of households in Asheville don’t have a car. Is it too much to ask that a key source of transportation, especially for those people without cars, be modestly humane and accommodating? Our guest today wants his local leaders to start thinking about that how much they prioritize car travel and how little they consider the often much more cost-effective and resilient forms of transportation like biking, walking, and transit.
Overall, our guest’s message is simple but so important: If you see something wrong in your city, you have the power to fix it. And you should step up and do just that.
Additional Show Notes
-
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
-
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.
Thursday Feb 17, 2022
Thursday Feb 17, 2022
The Marlborough Community Land Trust in Kansas City has been stepping up to help connect more neighbors, especially low-income neighbors, with opportunities for homeownership and to ensure that those opportunities continue in perpetuity for future families, too. Community Land Trusts are a model for stabilizing neighborhoods while at the same time allowing low- and middle-income people the chance to build household wealth.
This episode features Rebecca McQuillen, Executive Director of the Marlborough Community Land trust, and Rodger Kube, president of the Land Trust’s board. You’ll hear them talk about how they got started, including the creative ways they’ve pursued funding and built positive partnerships to accomplish their goals.
You’ll also hear a really thorough description of how a land trust works and why it’s been a successful approach in many neighborhoods like theirs. Rebecca and Rodger get candid about the challenges of this work, especially in the current, hotly competitive housing market. And they tell some moving stories of how the chance to pursue that American dream of homeownership has changed lives in the Marlborough neighborhood.
P.S. If you listen to this episode, you’ll also get to enjoy our new podcast music, created by Strong Towns Content Manager, Jay Stange.
Additional Show Notes
-
Nominate your town for the Strongest Town contest. Just a couple days left to submit your nomination!
-
Visit the Marlborough Community Land Trust website.
-
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
-
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.
Thursday Feb 10, 2022
Thursday Feb 10, 2022
What would you do in your community if you knew you couldn’t fail? That was the question guiding Rabbi Donna Berman as she looked at a crumbling historic synagogue building in Hartford, Connecticut. It was home to a small nonprofit on the verge of closing, but Rabbi Donna saw a future there and she knew that things could only improve from their current state.
Hired on as executive director of the Charter Oak Cultural Center, she and a single volunteer board member started a small newsletter and some simple events to start getting people through the doors of the building. Through a process of building trust with neighbors, slowly raising the money to incrementally fix up the space and finding out what the neighborhood needed most, the Cultural Center has grown into a space that serves hundreds of youths with arts programs, offers resources and education for homeless residents, and operates as a space for the whole community.
In this conversation on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel Quednau, you’ll hear about the step-by-step approach that Rabbi Donna and her colleagues had to renovating the building and creating community programs—and how those things worked in tandem. You’ll also hear about how they’ve adapted to neighborhood needs over time, especially during COVID. Rabbi Donna also touches a bit on the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, repairing the world, and how that guides her work.
Additional Show Notes
-
Nominate your town for the Strongest Town contest.
-
Visit the Charter Oak Cultural Center website.
-
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
-
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.
Thursday Feb 03, 2022
Thursday Feb 03, 2022
De’Nita Wright comes from a family of activists, and has been involved with bringing neighbors together for cooperative organizing around affordable housing and food access in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. She’s the featured guest on today’s episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel Quednau.
Wright is the founder of the Coalition of West Louisville Neighborhood Associations and also serves on the board of the Louisville Association for Community Economics. Both efforts are focused on connecting neighbors with one another to build broad-based support for goals like a new community grocery store, or efforts to preserve home ownership in the neighborhood. Wright has watched band-aid government programs try and fail to help her community, and sees outside money making its way into her neighborhood in a negative way.
She’s a strong believer in the power of co-ops as a long-term solution to economic challenges. For Wright, cooperative organizations are the way of the future, ensuring that residents have a say in what takes place in their neighborhood, and have the collective power to make it happen.
Additional Show Notes
-
Nominate your town for the Strongest Town contest.
-
Visit the Louisville Association for Community Economics website.
-
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
-
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.
Thursday Jan 27, 2022
Thursday Jan 27, 2022
Gracen Johnson, a founding member and long-time contributor to Strong Towns, recently had that now-common experience of moving mid-pandemic—to Ottawa in Canada. Yet she’s found small but powerful ways to get to know neighbors and be a positive part of her neighborhood. Having a dog to walk regularly helps. So does observing what’s going on around her and finding ways to plug into that, rather than showing up with her own agenda. If you’ve heard of our "4-Step Process for Public Investment" at Strong Towns, this is exactly what Gracen is talking about.
Gracen has lived in rural and urban areas, but she says she’s not a city person or a small town person—rather, she’s “a neighborhood person.” In this episode, you’ll hear a lot from Gracen about how to connect with your neighbors and, as she says, “give more than you take” with those around you. Near the end of the interview, we also have an interesting conversation about top-down versus bottom-up advocacy, because the reason Gracen moved to Toronto was to work for a quasi-federal government housing agency. It’s certainly a valuable discussion.
Additional Show Notes
-
Nominate your town for the Strongest Town contest.
-
Read Gracen’s "Places I Don’t Want to Sit" photo essay.
-
Why are street trees important? Read "The Magic of Tree-Lined Streets," by Sarah Kobos.
-
Watch the Curbside Chat video series Gracen created for Strong Towns
-
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
-
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.
Thursday Jan 20, 2022
Thursday Jan 20, 2022
If you wanted to decrease crime in your neighborhood, what would you do? Say there’s a park where people tend to hang out selling and doing drugs, getting into trouble, and making the rest of the neighbrohood feel unsafe… Would you set up more police patrols? Install brighter lighting? Maybe cut down the bushes that protect the park from public view? These are all typical tactics that cities use.
But today’s guest on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast tried something very different: He and the organizations he leads —the Lykins Neighborhood Association and Neighborhood Legal Support of Kansas City—have been combatting crime in a Kansas City neighborhood through activity and development.
Gregg Lombardi is a practicing lawyer and has been using legal strategies to help a neighborhood procure abandoned homes and rehab them. His organization serves as a facilitator, convener, and liaison for development, helping bring together the financial resources to make these projects happen and, most importantly, giving primary focus to listening to what residents want to see in their neighborhood. They’re also spurring neighborhood activities—like soccer practice and local events in that now formerly dangerous park.
When we see disinvested neighborhoods, we shouldn’t just throw up our hands and conclude they’re on a downward trajectory that can’t be stopped. Lombardi says: “There are a lot of problems in neighborhoods that are solvable.” The work happening in the Lykins Neighborhood of Kansas City is already serving as a pilot project for development and revitalization in other neighborhoods, too.
In this interview, hosted by Rachel Quednau, you’ll see the incremental, “small bets” approach that Lombardi and the neighbors involved in the project are employing. You’ll also learn about how so many challenges and opportunities in our neighborhoods are interconnected: public space, housing, safety, local businesses, and more.
Additional Show Notes
-
Visit the Lykins Neighborhood Association website.
-
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
-
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.
Thursday Jan 13, 2022
Thursday Jan 13, 2022
Andrea Marr has had a fascinating career trajectory. She’s a nuclear engineer, she’s served in the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf, volunteered on a solar panel project in Nicaragua and now leads the city of Costa Mesa, California, as the mayor pro tem. She’s also a Strong Towns member.
What’s the connection between these different roles and experiences? For Marr, it’s about wanting to serve something beyond herself.
In her current position as city councilor and mayor pro tem, she’s dedicated herself over the last few years to helping shift the culture around biking and walking in her region. For a car-dominated place like southern California, it’s not easy, but Marr is a big believer in the power of incremental progress. She’s also been working on economic development efforts and helping the city improve after some dysfunctional leadership.
Andrea Marr is yet another badass Strong Towns advocate in local government and an engineer pushing for change. We’re excited for you to hear her story on this week’s episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel Quednau.
Additional Show Notes
-
Check out some of our new columns: Neighborhood Stories (by Karla Theilen), Community Building (by John Pattison), and the High Value fiction serial (by Hamilton Ludwig).
-
Listen to recent Bottom-Up Revolution episodes featuring Strong Towns advocates in local government, including Ashley Salvador, Mason Thompson, and Rob Green.
-
Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.
-
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
-
Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.
-
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.
Thursday Jan 06, 2022
Thursday Dec 16, 2021
Thursday Dec 16, 2021
Kirk Seyfert got his start in a church basement. As he describes it, he was just a guy who cared about biking and transportation access, and started noticing a need in his community of Salem, Oregon. Seyfert heard about some neighbors who were walking miles to their third shift jobs because they didn’t own cars and the city bus service shut down during evenings and weekends. He thought that access to bikes might make a difference for these guys, and he was right.
That spark of an idea has since grown into a nonprofit called the Northwest Hub that reclaims and refurbishes bikes for low-income people, teaches bike maintenance classes, provides job training for young people, and more. It’s a great example of an organization that has adapted over time based on community needs.
In this conversation, you’ll hear from Seyfert about how his program got started, the issues they’ve been working on, and how you might implement something similar in your city. We have a saying at Strong Towns that small improvements in bike infrastructure and access are some of the most high-return investments you can make in your city. You’ll see how true that is in this story.
Additional Show Notes
-
Visit the Northwest Hub website.
-
Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.
-
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
-
Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.
-
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.