This episode, which we published in May of 2021, came to us because Strong Towns Community Builder John Pattison is friends with the guest, Coté Soerens and her husband, Tim. In the podcast you’re about to hear, the focus is on a wonderful neighborhood coffee shop that Soerens opened to be a gathering place in her community of South Park in Seattle. But we’ve been thinking about this episode recently because John also let us know that Coté and Tim have been leading an effort called Reconnect South Park to tear down a harmful highway that cuts through the neighborhood.

Soeren’s coffee shop, Resistencia, has served as a convening space for advocates working on this issue, a perfect example of how a neighborhood café can create so much benefit for a city—not just in providing jobs, providing local goods, activating a storefront—but also in being a “third space” where people can get together and work on making their city stronger. If you want to learn more about how to get involved in stopping wasteful highways in your city, check out our End Highway Expansion campaign.

• Resistencia website.

• Reconnect South Park website.

• Visit the End Highway Expansion campaign page.

• Strong Towns articles on gentrification.

• Urban Fresh Food Collective.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

This episode from August of 2021 is a fascinating story about a Strong Towns member who literally bought a road in order to try and make it safer. Mary Moriarty Jones lives in Honolulu, where plenty of roads are privately owned, which is what made this story possible. You’ll hear a lot more about that process and why Jones is so passionate about making this street safer for her children to walk to school. But since we recorded, we also have an update to share: Jones emailed a couple months ago to say that she successfully transferred ownership of the road back to the city and county, who now plan to add sidewalks and crossings to hopefully make the street safer for everyone who uses it.

This is ultimately the story of someone who was so dedicated to the Strong Towns mission and so believed in the cause of safer streets that she did everything she possibly could to make it happen. We hope that those who come after her do not have to fight quite so hard just to ensure they can safely walk to work or school without risking their lives. But we’re thankful and inspired by advocates like Mary Jones. Check out our Safe and Productive Streets campaign if you want to connect more with these efforts.

• A couple of articles about Mary Jones’s quest for safer streets, from Civil Beat: “This Diamond Head Mom Found An Unusual Way To Fight City Hall“ and “Diamond Head Mom Who Took Over Road Riles Neighbors By Charging For Parking.”

• Safe and Productive Streets campaign page.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

The episode we’re re-running this week is one of Rachel’s all-time favorites. It features our amazing colleague Lauren Fisher, although that’s not why it’s a favorite. Rather, it’s because of the candid way Lauren speaks about her life and the choices she has made to build household resilience: raising animals, growing food, mending and crafting things herself rather than buying new, and, perhaps most important of all, developing deep connections with neighbors and family for the good times and the bad.

Since we recorded this conversation in the summer of 2021, Lauren and her husband have moved to a new home in the same area which offered them greater opportunities for their little homestead. Her parents also moved in with them into the basement unit of the house and plan to eventually build an accessory dwelling unit for them to live in long term. In addition to the chickens and rabbits she was already raising, they’ve added sheep. Lauren’s also been selling and exchanging things like flowers and eggs with people in her town, and plans to do more of that in the coming months. All of these things are not only a way to provide for the family, but also a way to meet her neighbors. You’ll hear more about why that’s so important and the role of community in building resilience throughout this conversation.

• “#DotheMath on Chicken Regulations,” by Lauren Fisher, Strong Towns (August 2020).

• “5 Places to Meet New People to Join the Strong Towns Conversation,” by Lauren Fisher, Strong Towns (April 2021).

• Sign up for Strong Towns email.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

We were reminded about this episode after recently recording a new interview with Sarah Cipkar, a small-scale developer based in Windsor, Ontario, whose interest in accessory dwelling units prompted her to build her own ADU.

Today’s re-run conversation with Ashley Salvador was recorded in the fall of 2021. Salvador is a big advocate for accessory dwelling units and, like Cipkar, lives in Canada, in the city of Edmonton. (Canadians must be onto something when it comes to expanding housing options and making housing more affordable!) We could sing the praises of accessory dwelling units all day, but the basic gist is that they allow homeowners to build a small additional apartment on their land, meaning rental income for the owner and the chance for a new resident to live in a desirable neighborhood at a much lower cost than the typical home in that area. It’s a win-win situation.

What started for Salvador as a research project turned into people asking her for input on how they could build their own ADUs and navigate the zoning and permitting processes, so she started an organization to help teach people about all of this. And eventually, she was so driven to make her community stronger that she decided to run for city council and won in 2021.

It’s a trajectory we’ve heard about many times on this show: Someone starts exploring an issue they care about, momentum gets built around that issue and other people start joining the cause, and, sometimes, that individual decides to take the next step into leadership and run for local office. You’ll hear about that whole journey in this conversation, which is one of our most popular episodes to date.

• YEGarden Suites website.

• Check out the related interview with Sarah Cipkar.

• “Will Edmonton Be the First Major Canadian City to Eliminate Parking Minimums?” by Ashley Salvador, Strong Towns (May 2020).

• “How to Get Rid of Parking Minimums,” a Strong Towns webcast featuring Ashley Salvador.

• Follow Ashley Salvador on Twitter.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

This one, originally recorded in February of 2021, shares the amazing success story of Alfred Melbourne, who came out of prison, got access to a small, trash-filled plot of land, and began tilling it, improving his neighborhood in the process. Eventually he turned that into a non-profit urban farm operation, Three Sisters Gardens, where young people learn skills and the produce is donated in an area without much fresh food access—plus, Melbourne’s now expanded to other plots around the city.

The organic (pun intended) growth of this effort has impacted so many people and shows how a little seed money and guidance can allow an entrepreneur to thrive. Think about that when you see billions of dollars allotted for highway expansion. Imagine what we could do if we took a fraction of that money and used it to jump-start neighborhood improving efforts like Three Sisters Gardens.

• Three Sisters Gardens website.

• Three Sisters Gardens Instagram page, where you’ll find photos and videos.

• Center for Land-Based Learning.

• “This Modern Farmer Employs At-Risk Youth to Keep Them Off the Streets,” by Alfred Melbourne, Modern Farmer (January 2021).

• Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Today’s guest is Sarah Cipkar, and she experienced her own version of this journey. A few years ago, she decided to take the step to build an accessory dwelling unit in her yard in Windsor, Ontario. An accessory dwelling unit (also called an additional dwelling unit, ADU, or granny flat, among other terms) just refers to any small housing that’s added to an existing lot. It could be a small apartment built over your garage or a mini cottage constructed in the backyard of your home.

Cipkar successfully built that ADU, found a great tenant, and the property was soon providing income for her family, plus a new sense of community with her tenant, who helped out with watching the house while Cipkar was on trips, shared meals with her family, and more. (Cipkar will tell you about the myriad benefits of ADUs in this episode. This is just the beginning of the list, really.)  

After going through the intensive process of not just building the ADU, but first jumping through the many government hoops, permits, and financing challenges to get the project off the ground in the first place, Cipkar was motivated to help others navigate this process, too. She started a pilot project called ADUSearch, which is an online hub where anyone can look up their address and find out what sorts of additional dwelling units could be built on their property. She began this initiative with properties in Windsor, but is now expanding it, thanks to some grants and partnerships, to encompass the entire country of Canada. 

• ADUsearch.ca website.

• Visit Sarah Cipkar’s website.

• ADUsearch and Sarah Cipkar on Instagram.

• Learn more about Accessory Dwelling Units in the Strong Towns Action Lab where you can find core insights, case studies, key articles and more.

• Backdoor Revolution: The Definitive Guide to ADU Development by Kol Peterson.

• Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

In this conversation, Mayor Stewart talks about her efforts to increase housing downtown, especially given the history of a highway that cut through New Britain during the urban renewal period decades ago. She sees the financial and social value of investing in places that prioritize people walking, biking, and enjoying life—not just people driving through. She also knows how important access to affordable transportation options is for many of her constituents who don’t own cars.

Mayor Stewart is committed to listening to New Britain residents and responding to their concerns, no matter what political party they associate with, and she’s seen serious success improving the financial situation in her town, lifting them out of a deficit hole into a surplus.

• Read more about Mayor Stewart.

• New Britain’s Plan of Conservation and Development.

• New Britain’s Complete Streets Roadmap.

• Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

That moment of standing up at a council meeting led him to look around at the others who were also supporting the rental housing initiative and gather those people together into what eventually became Del-POP: Deltans for People-Oriented Places, a Local Conversation group that is discussing and advocating on Strong Towns issues in their city. In particular, this group has focused on speaking up when they support something and sharing that support with elected officials to help bolster positive change. They recognized how often people speak up in opposition to things they don’t like and decided to counteract those negative voices with advocacy for things—housing, bike lanes, small businesses, etc.—instead of just against things.

Norm joined the Strong Towns team in late July as our brand-new Member Advocate. Prior to this, Norm was a pastor and in this conversation, he’ll discuss the connection he sees between his religious ministry and his Strong Towns leadership, plus share about Del-POP and the other efforts he’s made in his community to build a stronger town.

We know you’ll be inspired by Norm’s enthusiasm and vision!

• Del-POP website.

• Join the Strong Towns Toastmasters group.

• Learn more about Strong Towns Local Conversation groups and how to start your own.

• Bottom-Up Revolution episode featuring Cary Westerbeck (founder of Bo-POP).

• Contact Norm: norm@strongtowns.org.

• Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

While we had many responses in all of those professional categories, the biggest one was the last one: regular people who care about their communities. Today’s guest is one of those folks, although it’s not right to say she is “just” a concerned citizen—nor is that true of most people involved in this movement.

Emma Durand-Wood is a writer, editor, and former librarian. She’s also a leader in her neighborhood association and a big advocate for street trees. Durand-Wood lives in Winnipeg in Canada, which she calls “a big little city.” She started getting involved in local issues after a pawn shop was being proposed in her neighborhood and she and some neighbors got together to say that business wasn’t a great fit for their community. Since then, she started a blog about her city and neighborhood, made the choice to walk and bike and take transit with her family instead of driving everywhere, helped revive her neighborhood association, and led an initiative to plant more street trees.

In this interview, Durand-Wood talks especially about that last item and the surprising power of trees to transform your city. She also discusses the value of neighborhood gatherings, big and small, including the “front yard pancake party” she and her husband host.

• Follow Emma Durand-Wood on Twitter.
• Read her blog, Winnipeg O’ My Heart.
• Read “Henderson Highway Blues,” a Strong Towns article by Emma Durand-Wood.
• Learn more about the Glen Elm Boulevard Tree Project.
• Visit the Trees Please Winnipeg website.
• Check out the Glen Elm Neighborhood Association website.
•  Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Since that move, however, the city—like so many across the U.S.—has become increasingly unaffordable and Spencer has stepped up to help try and change that. An opening in city leadership led him to apply to be Spokane’s planning director and he was hired to the position earlier this year. He’s been part of several important reforms in the city including, significantly, some substantial modifications to their accessory dwelling unit code, which is allowing a lot more of these small homes to be built at a time when greater housing options at low price points are desperately needed.

Spokane also undertook a unique “interim zoning ordinance” to allow up to four units to be built on any lot—a change that happened in record time compared with the years (or even decades) these sorts of reforms usually take to occur in the typical city. Spencer goes into detail about how and why that could occur, and the way he sees it as a special pilot program they can learn from that may pave the way to more permanent change.

In this conversation, Spencer also shares prescient insights on urban planning and how those in this profession need to find ways to move past talking. It can be more comfortable to continue to plan, as a planner, he says.  We need to turn that planning into action.

• Strong Towns articles by Spencer Gardner.

• More information about the Strong Towns lawsuit with the Minnesota Engineering Licensing Board and how you can support our efforts to reform the engineering profession: strongtowns.org/supportreform.

• Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Years back, she was an engineer doing some of the typical projects that many civil engineers end up doing these days: building suburban subdivisions. Somewhere along the way, she encountered Strong Towns and especially the now famous video, “Conversation with an Engineer.” As she describes it, she “saw the light” and was convinced that engineering didn’t have to be about paving endless roads to the middle of nowhere and building expensive suburban developments on the edge of town. It could be about making places more prosperous and people-centered, not less. 

Today, she works for a healthcare company, helping them develop facilities designed for healing and comfort. She’s also led some efforts to get these large campuses to think about how to be a good neighbor to the surrounding community and helped implement street and public space designs to facilitate that. In this conversation, Lindsey talks about her work today as well as her previous leadership and Strong Towns organizing in Rochester, Minnesota. 

This conversation might be especially interesting to the engineers out there wondering how they can make a positive difference with their careers and not keep maintaining the suburban status quo. But it will also appeal to anyone who’s hoping to build stronger towns where they live.

• “Conversation with an Engineer” video.

• Lindsey Meek (Twitter).

• Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Today, there’s a movement to stop building and expanding these highways, and Strong Towns is a leading voice in that fight. There’s also a movement to try to undo the harm that they’ve already caused and remove them—or parts of them—altogether.

The Treme neighborhood of New Orleans has been home to one such highway for decades: the Claiborne expressway. Treme is an active, culturally rich community near the heart of the city, but it’s been harmed by the dust, noise, disruption, pollution, crime, and economic disinvestment that resulted from this highway cutting through the neighborhood. Amy Stelly, whose family has been in Treme for decades, is helping lead a fight to remove that highway for good.

She’s an urban planner and artist who knows what the neighborhood was like before this highway and sees how its removal could help local businesses thrive, help more residents invest in their homes, and make Treme a safer, more enjoyable place to live and spend time—not just a place to speed through quickly.

To help fellow residents see that potential and push for that change, she’s led community gatherings, activism, and poster campaigns to show what Treme could be without the highway. On this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, she shares a wealth of candid insights about the need for highway removal and the process to make it happen.

• Claiborne Avenue Alliance website.

• Amy Stelly on Twitter.

• “Cracking the Code on Fighting Highway Expansion Projects,” by Amy Stelly, Strong Towns (May 2022).

• Congress for the New Urbanism.

• “Treme Planner Says It’s Time to Remove the Claiborne Expressway,” by Rich Collins, Biz New Orleans.

• “Highways destroyed Black neighborhoods like mine. Can we undo the damage now?“ by Amy Stelly, Washington Post.

• Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Stephanie and Sean Tuff also started seeing that possibility a few years ago and they turned that into a new electric bike business. A few years back, Steph and Sean and their three young children were spending more time outside and looking for ways to get around town that weren’t as expensive or polluting as a car. They found that biking provided this for them and so much more—the chance to really see the city around them instead of just letting it blur past through a windshield, the chance to enjoy fresh air and exercise and, frankly, to have more fun getting around than the typical car commute.

But with young kids in tow and the difference in their abilities to bike quickly at the same speed—especially in hilly areas—they ended up turning to electric bikes to help make their travels even better and easier than on a regular bike.

Eventually they partnered with friends to start a new e-bike company: Tuff Hill eBikes. Opening their business during the pandemic led them to choose a hybrid model where they don’t have a formal storefront but they give people the chance to meet up and test drive a bike, access maintenance, and more. 

For Steph and Sean, this isn’t just about sales—although they’ve been quite successful in their enterprise. “We don’t just see it as selling bikes,” says Sean, “we see it as connecting people to a bigger community.” In this conversation, you’ll hear the Tuffs talk about how biking around their city has helped them understand Strong Towns concepts in a real and up-close way, and how they hope that getting more people on e-bikes will allow those people to share in the Strong Towns approach and mission, too.

• • Tuff Hill eBikes.

  • Not Just Bikes (YouTube).

  • “Are Electric Bikes a Passing Fad or a Revolutionary Transportation Tool?” by Rachel Quednau, Strong Towns (February 2022).

  • “How Dutch Cities Restored the ‘Freedom to Roam’,” by Chris and Melissa Bruntlett, Strong Towns (June 2021).

  • Youth En Route website.

  • Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.

  • Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Schaible has a degree in landscape architecture and spent years working for the National Park Service. He brings that love of public space and awareness of design issues to his leadership in the Hyattsville City Council. Like so many people you’ve heard from on this show, Schaible got pulled into local politics when an issue in his neighborhood grabbed his attention—in this case a misguided and poorly-thought-out development down the street. As he became involved in learning and advocacy around that project, he eventually decided to step up and run for city council, and won in 2019.

In addition to that, he also got inspired to start a “street design team” in his city after reading about the concept in the Strong Towns book, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer. His team of dozens of residents has discussed the book together, conducted bike tours and walk audits, and looked at crash data on dangerous stroads in Hyattsville, among other things.

We hope this conversation gets you thinking about how you might even organize something similar in your own city.

• “Establishing a Street Design Team” (online course from Strong Towns’ Local-Motive Tour).
• Confessions of a Recovering Engineer (book).
• Toole Design (planning firm).
• Get in touch with Danny Schaible: dschaible@hyattsville.org.
• Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.
• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

So, Ari began attending public meetings and introducing himself to local elected officials who might be able to make streets a little safer. He joined the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition, eventually becoming team leader of his local chapter. Since getting fired up about these issues a couple years ago, he’s been involved in many successful campaigns to add bike lanes and bike parking, and to make intersections safer for people on bikes. The natural effect is that this also makes streets safer for everyone—in a vehicle, walking, you name it.

While he was advocating for design and policy changes, Ari was also noticing how many people in his community didn’t have the opportunity to bike because they had old bikes that were broken down, and they didn’t know how to fix them. Thinking about what small step he could take to change that situation, he helped set up a series of bike repair events, in which he coordinated volunteers, got use of a local parking lot, and negotiated discounts with a local bike shop for new parts. In total, he and his fellow volunteers have helped over 300 bikes get fixed.

Ari has also been thinking about transportation issues in his city on a holistic level, and after reading Strong Towns, one thing that really stood out to him was the amount of excessive, wasteful parking in his city—space that could be better used for businesses or homes. So he helped lead a campaign to decrease parking minimum requirements in Sunnyvale.

• Bike Sunnyvale website.

• Ari’s comprehensive guide to starting a free bike repair event in your town.

• Ari was named a Bike Champion of the Year 2022 by Bike to Wherever Days. Read about him and the award here.

• “We Require WAY Too Much Parking,” by Seairra Shepherd (article about Ari’s efforts to end parking minimums in Sunnyvale, CA).

• Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Jones sees the connections between the challenges that many communities, especially mid-size cities like Milwaukee, face: population stagnation, educational and health disparities, safety, housing affordability… He sees solutions in a Strong Towns approach to urban planning. In this conversation, you’ll also hear about an initiative he helps lead called Urban Spaceship. We’ll just leave that as a teaser since the name alone should be enough to get you intrigued.

• Find Montavius Jones on Twitter.

• Check out Jones’ travel blog.

• Incremental Development Alliance.

• Newaukee.

• “Design Speed is a Value Statement,” by Charles Marohn, Strong Towns (July 2021).

• “The Strong Towns Approach to Public Investment,” by Charles Marohn, Strong Towns (September 2019).

• Send your story ideas and guest suggestions 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.

When people leave and no one comes to replace them in smaller towns, businesses shut down, schools are half-empty, open positions can’t be filled, and even basic services are a struggle to cover with declining property taxes. It’s a downward spiral.

Today’s guests are doing something about that. Jennifer Stromsten is the Director of Programs at the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation in Brattleboro, Vermont, and Alex Beck runs their Welcoming Communities program. These leaders take a holistic approach to addressing problems like population decline through economic investment, workforce training, and, of particular interest for our conversation today, inviting new Americans—refugees—to their community and helping them integrate and find employment when they arrive. 

Jen and Alex talk about how this Welcoming Communities initiative has breathed new life into their rural town, giving a sense of hope for the future, filling necessary jobs and rebuilding the economic prospects of the place.  Their organization has worked with local businesses to partner them with new immigrants, coordinating transportation, setting up interpreters when needed, and figuring out what training these refugees need to get back on their feet and begin employment in Brattleboro. It's a situation that everyone is benefitting from.

• Visit the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation website.

• Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Today’s guest, Jonathan Curth, is here to talk about that last campaign issue: ending parking minimums. He’s the development services director for the city of Fayetteville, Arkansas—one of the first U.S. cities to eliminate commercial parking minimums. These are laws that mandate the amount of parking spaces a business needs to provide. They’re on the books in many U.S. cities and they reach a point of absurdity—an overreach of government that harms local businesses, small-scale developers, home owners, and renters. Luckily, a growing movement of cities is smashing these outdated laws, and you can see the full list on our map of cities that have ended parking minimums.

Jonathan talks a lot more about why these regulations are a problem and why Fayetteville decided to put an end to them, not only because they were harming business opportunities, but also because they were leaving important historic buildings downtown vacant or at risk of destruction, simply because those places were built before cars or parking minimums were a thing. Jonathan also talks about the slow, but important, results that have come about since minimums were eliminated in Fayetteville, including new restaurants opening, vacant lots getting filled, and city staff having a much quicker process to approve new permits for developments and business start-ups.

At the end of the day, eliminating parking minimum requirements is about getting rid of a law that’s unnecessary. Let the market, business owners, and property owners decide what parking is needed, otherwise you’ll end up with empty lots instead of productive places.

• Explore parking resources, case studies, and more in our Action Lab.

• View a comprehensive map of cities that have ended parking minimums.

• Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Zadeh has been a part of the Strong Towns movement as a member for more than six years. During that time, she served as city council member in Fort Worth, Texas, and she’s now the executive director of Community Design Forth Worth, which is “a forum for ideas that empower and strengthen all Fort Worth communities through design.” She’s also an urban planner by training.

In this conversation, we’ll hear about the ways Zadeh has navigated leadership in a politically diverse community by focusing on the economic arguments that everyone can get behind. She also talks about her experience running for city council, as well as a run for mayor. And she discusses the unique process she leads at Community Design Fort Worth, helping educate the public and translate complex planning issues—often in order to seed the ground before a controversial issue like re-zoning or building bike lanes comes up for a vote.

Like so many Strong Towns advocates, Zadeh will inspire you with her dedication to her city and her belief that anyone who’s passionate about their place can step up to make it stronger.

• Community Design Fort Worth website.

• “Learn the 4-Step Process for Public Investment,” an on-demand Strong Towns Local-Motive workshop featuring Tiffany Owens.

• Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Nick was drawn to Strong Towns’ focus on doing the math and assessing the value per acre of developments in our cities. He’s even done analyses on his own community and shared those with elected leaders. Amanda was interested in the Strong Towns approach to helping downtowns and small businesses get activated again and grow economically resilient.

The Lanatas took the Strong Towns mission and really ran with it over the last couple years: meeting and getting to know their city councilors, helping their neighbors see the potential in their city, starting a Local Conversation group, and allowing the Strong Towns approach to guide their personal choices—like how they get around town.

We’re excited for you to hear from these inspiring Strong Towns members and hope that you’ll take a step and join them by becoming a member yourself.

• Learn more about value per acre analyses.

• Not Just Bikes on YouTube

• Visit the Urban3 website

• Send your story ideas and guest suggestions 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.

There are a lot of people proposing solutions to this housing crisis and one of them is today’s guest, Beth Silverman. But the solution she’s been working on isn’t one of the typical responses you might have heard lately, like “we just need to build more homes,” or “we just need more government subsidies for housing.” Rather, it’s about uniting for-profit landlords and developers, together with non-profit service organizations toward a common goal of getting people housing who need it.

Beth Silverman is the founder and executive director of the Lotus Campaign, whose mission is “[t]o increase the availability of housing for people experiencing homelessness by engaging the for-profit sector as a partner in the solution.” She sees herself partly as a translator between entities that typically work separately and rarely talk to one another. She knows that nonprofits have services, connections, and insights to offer, and that landlords and real estate professionals can bring innovation, capital and access to housing, for homeless people or people at risk of homelessness.

During its short time in operation, the Lotus Campaign has already housed more than 360 individuals and families for a cost to their organization of less than $1,000 per person each year, and most of those people are able to stay housed after their participation in the program ends.

• Visit the Lotus Campaign website.

• Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Karla Theilen lives in Missoula, Montana, but also spends time in other parts of the state through her nursing work, and visits Minnesota regularly, where she grew up and still has family. In this conversation, Karla talks about the way she finds value, connection, and things to celebrate, wherever she’s visiting, and treats all these places as temporary homes. You’re more likely to find her in a local coffee shop perusing the community bulletin boards than in a chain restaurant because she knows that the local spots are where the best stories can be found.

We’ve been honored to feature some of those stories in Karla’s weekly column on the Strong Towns website, and we’re excited for you to hear from her today about everything from crafting and hobbies, to the things she’s learned while walking her dog, to her attitude of saying “yes” to adventure.

• Subscribe to the Life in a Strong Town Substack.

• Read all of Karla’s columns.

• Learn more about our open Member Advocate position and apply today. (Applications due by 11:59 p.m. CT on May 22, 2022.)

• Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Today’s guest is one of those people. Cooper Frost hails from Charlotte, Michigan, a rural community of about 10,000 people outside of Lansing. For a while, he had been absent from the town, but during the pandemic, he came home to Charlotte and has since made it his mission to help it grow stronger.

He’s stepped up to get involved in a number of local organizations with a particular focus on economic development. He’s also purchased his mother’s house, and has begun investing in it to help build up generational wealth and stability. Additionally, Frost has been dedicated to sharing the message about bottom-up, incremental transformation through talking with community members about the Strong Towns movement and books.

Frost is part of a long line of advocates, many of whom we’ve featured on this show, who believe in their hometowns and want to see them thrive. He knows that building up passion for the place where he came from will help those around him see its value and make it stronger over the long run. He’s all about taking that next smallest step to see this vision come to fruition.

• Charlotte Rising website.

• Learn more about our open Member Advocate position and apply today.

• Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

These efforts are particularly meaningful in a border town where almost half of the population lives below the poverty line. These are opportunities to grow food in backyards and gardens to feed one’s family, and this program has also helped residents grow produce to sell to local restaurants and stores, or turn into other food businesses, themselves. 

David Cantu is an alderperson and Maya Sanchez in the City Administrator for San Elizario. Both are very active in their city, in this agricultural initiative, and in their own gardens, too. 

We interviewed Cantu and Sanchez for an article back in 2020, and, as you’ll hear in this interview, since that time they’ve helped more of the community be involved in growing food, connected these efforts with flood mitigation goals, and even had the chance to sell locally grown produce to neighboring cities.

• “This Texas Town Is Growing Stronger By Thinking *Inside* the Box”,” by Rachel Quednau, Strong Towns (August 2020).

• Learn more about our open Member Advocate position and apply today.

• 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.

Jay discusses the ways he’s worked with neighbors to push for the change, tested out temporary approaches, and addressed the concerns of business owners along the roads in question. In his working class, renter-dominated neighborhood in Anchorage, these efforts were also part of a larger movement to help people believe in the future of their neighborhood and combat apathy—to show people that they had something to be proud of in their community. 

In the episode, we also talk about Jay’s lifelong love of biking, from riding his bike to sports practice as a kid when his parents couldn’t drive him, to bike commuting and biking with his own kids today. Plus, we discuss Jay’s belief that change should look fun and it should happen collaboratively.  We know you’re going to appreciate the energy and passion Jay brings to this conversation. It’s something he brings to all of his work at Strong Towns.

• “The Road that Killed a City,” by Jay Stange, Strong Towns (March 2022).

• “The Pedalling Pastor,” by Jay Stange, Strong Towns (March 2022).

• Read all articles by Jay.

• 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.

Today’s guests on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel Quednau, are doing the challenging but important work of bridging political divides in their home state. Carlos Alfaro and Jacob Pritchett founded Arizona Talks as a platform for learning, dialogue, and connection for individuals impacting public policy. They facilitate debates, conversations, and dialogues amongst residents and leaders throughout Arizona. It’s a diverse state full of lots of different political views, and Carlos and Jacob have navigated those waters to bring together Democrats, Republicans, and folks between and outside those labels for constructive conversation on the issues that matter. 

In this interview, they talk about how this project came to be, some of their successes and failures, and their advice for others trying to build common ground in a polarized time.

• Arizona Talks website.

• 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.

But besides serving at Strong Towns, they both also work part time at local small-scale farms. Christa’s is a vegetable farm and Seairra’s, an animal farm. We invited them on the show to talk about their experiences in this vital industry: growing the food we all eat and need to survive, and growing it close to home so it doesn’t require costly shipping or rely on global supply chains to get to our kitchens. 

This life isn’t easy. Christa and Seairra both talk about the round-the-clock, 365-day nature of farm work, but also how much they love it and how rewarding it is to be outside, getting your hands dirty and literally seeing the fruits of your labor. They discuss the growing interest they’ve witnessed in local food in their regions and the ways their farms have gotten connected with people in the surrounding towns. 

This isn’t the first conversation we’ve had with a local farmer on The Bottom-Up Revolution. But we think Christa and Seairra offer a unique perspective as workers on rural farms in the modern age.

• Brambling Rows Farm (Brainerd, MN)

• Trillium Dell Farm (Knoxville, IL)

• Previous podcast episodes about local food: “Beth Hoffman: Getting Real About the Cost—and Value—of Farming,” “Alfred Melbourne: Growing Food, Growing Resilience,” and “Alex Hagler: An Entrepreneur Creating Opportunities for Other Entrepreneur.”

• Read articles by Seairra Shepherd.

• 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.

The highway expansion would make a key crossing—where hundreds of children and parents walked to the school building every day—extremely dangerous. It would also bring noise and pollution into kids’ classrooms, strip recreational land away from the school, and, as with every highway expansion project, cost taxpayers millions of dollars to implement. The justification for the project from the DOT was basically: We planned for this a few decades ago and we finally got the funding, so let’s build it. 

Today’s guest is the author of that initial op-ed and a leading community activist in the fight against the project. Robin Roemer got in touch with us a little while ago to say that, after a four-year battle, he and his neighbors had finally succeeded in getting the city council to vote unanimously against the project. You’re about to hear his story of persistence, of bringing neighbors together to show that they have power over the future of their community and they don’t have to accept a harmful project being handed down from on high. 

Roemer has helpful advice for any community organizing effort, too: give people the facts and voice to help them make decisions for themselves, use peoples’ energy wisely, pace yourself for long-term efforts, and, also, you don’t have to participate in government processes that are rigged against you. He’s got a great story about not showing up for a city council meeting but instead, arranging a separate meeting for the community that would actually allow them to attend and voice their concerns. We’ll let him tell the rest…

• “A Literal Bridge From the Future to the Past,” by Robin Roemer (Strong Towns, October 2018).

• “After a fierce fight, San Jose abandons ‘extremely dangerous’ overpass project,” by Maggie Angst (The Mercury News, February 2022).

• California Walks website.

• 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.

After an accident several decades ago, Rosemarie Rossetti began using a wheelchair and she and her husband quickly realized the home they lived in would no longer accommodate her needs. After searching for a more accessible place to live and coming up short, they decided to build their own universally designed home and use it as a “living laboratory” to show others what is possible in home construction. 

Whether you live with a disability or not, know that many of your neighbors and fellow residents do and, as we age, it’s likely that we may also one day desire homes that accommodate mobility challenges or other needs. What would it mean to be able to stay in our current houses or apartments rather than having to move to a facility? This is the promise of universal design, among other things, and it doesn’t have to cost a lot to implement, either. 

Rosemarie Rossetti is a speaker, author, and leader in this field. We hope you enjoy this conversation about universal design.

• Rosemarie Rossetti’s website

• Universal Design Living Laboratory website

• Check out the Universal Design Toolkit

• Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

We’ll first hear from Marilyn Burns, who’s helping lead an effort to create a community laundry co-op in the Woodhill neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio.  

We’ll also hear from Alex Rodriguez, a Strong Towns member who’s been involved in an ongoing process to help revitalize his rural town of Lexington, New York, through arts, housing, and small business. 

Next, we’ll hear from Sheleita Miller, a Strong Towns member who runs a community radio program in Gary, Indiana, and has been helping business owners during the pandemic. 

And finally, we’ll close with a brief update from our summer intern last year, Sarah Davis, on her new urban planning job.

• Listen to past episodes featuring these guests: Marilyn Burns (May 2021), Alex Rodriguez (March 2021), Sheleita Miller (December 2020), Sarah Davis (September 2021)

• Check out the Woodhill Community Coop on Instagram.

• Learn more about the Lexington Arts and Science project.

• Visit the ”Heart to Heart with Sheleita Miller” Facebook page.

• Read about Toole Design.

• Join the Strong Towns Facebook group.

• Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

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.

• Grab your ticket to the 2022 Local-Motive Tour today!

• 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.

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.

• Grab your ticket to the 2022 Local-Motive Tour today!

• Check out the Asheville Bench Project on Instagram.

• Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

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.

• Grab your ticket to the 2022 Local-Motive Tour today.

• 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.

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.

• Grab your ticket to the 2022 Local-Motive Tour today!

• Nominate your town for the Strongest Town contest.

• Visit the Charter Oak Cultural Center website.

• Read and listen to more stories about the intersection between religious communities and Strong Towns issues.

• Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

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.

• Grab your ticket to the 2022 Local-Motive Tour today!

• 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.

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.

• Grab your ticket to the 2022 Local-Motive Tour today!

• Nominate your town for the Strongest Town contest.

• Read Strong Towns articles by Gracen.

• 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

• Check out the popular Not Just Bikes channel on YouTube.

• Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

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. 

• Grab your ticket to the 2022 Local-Motive Tour today!

• Visit the Lykins Neighborhood Association website.

• Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

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.

• Grab your ticket to the 2022 Local-Motive Tour today!

• 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.

Billy Altom is the executive director of APRIL, which stands for Association of Programs for Rural Independent Living. It’s a national nonprofit consisting of over 260 members from centers for independent living for people with disabilities, specifically located in rural areas. Altom has been involved in disability advocacy on a number of levels, including testifying for state and federal legislatures, working for multiple independent living organizations and now leading APRIL. He’s also a musician.

In this conversation, he talks about the importance of peer support—of seeing someone who looks like you and knows what you’re experiencing, whether that’s encountering a fellow wheelchair user on the bus or meeting another deaf person at school. This is particularly essential in rural areas where the population of people with disabilities can be fairly small and services can be quite sparse. Altom knows from personal experience the power of simply connecting with someone who also has a disability. He talks about rural transportation and housing challenges in particular, as well as the impact of COVID, both positive and negative for people with different abilities.

Throughout the interview, you’ll learn that he holds a deep commitment to engaging the people who are impacted by his work and ensures that his organization is always rooted in community needs—something we’re always advocating for at Strong Towns. Altom is such an engaging and dynamic speaker; we know you’re going to appreciate hearing his story and will learn something from his perspective.

Click here to view a transcript for this show.

• Visit the APRIL website.

• Grab your ticket to the 2022 Local-Motive Tour today!

• Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.

• Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

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.

• 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.

Alright, we’re exaggerating a little bit. But that’s kind of the vibe you get from food memoirs these days. And Bet the Farm is not that. Hoffman is brutally honest about the hardships she and her husband face in their farming venture—and that’s with land available and a good chunk of start-up money. She talks in depth about how much harder things are for farmers who don’t have these resources.  

In this interview on the Bottom-Up Revolution podcast (and in Hoffman’s book, if you read it), you’re going to notice a lot of parallels between the challenges of farming and the challenges of small towns in America, and you’ll also hear Hoffman talk about why farms and towns need each other to survive. 

• Order Bet the Farm: The Dollars and Sense of Growing Food in America and use code STRONG25 for 25% off your purchase today.

• Visit the Whippoorwill Creek Farm website

• Connect with Beth Hoffman on Twitter (@BethFoodAg).

• 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.

This movement is made up of all sorts of people and there’s a place for you here. Become a member today.

This week’s guest is Edmonton, Alberta-based city councilor, Ashley Salvador. Before her recent election, Ashley ran an organization called YEGarden Suites. (YEG is the abbreviation for Edmonton, and a garden suite is another term for an accessory dwelling unit.) Ashley has been a huge proponent of making this sort of housing more legally and practically easy to build. She and her cofounder teach classes, provide resources, and advocate to decisionmakers, all in pursuit of increased housing options and affordability through what she calls “gentle density.”

Her leadership on this and other local issues eventually led her to step up and run for local office. Ashley’s campaign brought together over 100 volunteers in a very grassroots effort, and now she’s a brand new city councilor.

In this interview, Ashley talks about the positive, Strong Towns changes happening in Edmonton, how she got where she is today, and her advice for others who hope to be local leaders, too. 

• YEGarden Suites website

• “Will Edmonton Be the First Major Canadian City to Eliminate Parking Minimums?” (Strong Towns article by Ashley Salvador)

• “How to Get Rid of Parking Minimums” (Strong Towns webcast featuring Ashley Salvador)

• Follow Ashley Salvador on Twitter.

• Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it 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.

That means really listening to residents and their concerns, and seeking out the voices that aren’t often present in public decision-making. It also means running a nonpartisan campaign, where Mason focused on land use and transportation issues as an entry point that he knew everyone could get behind. Everyone cares about the way their environment feels and looks and how they get around, he says, and that was a good way to start a conversation with his fellow Bothellites.

In this episode, Mason shares his journey to running for office, the family motto that he invites everyone to utilize, and also a fun tangent about the awesome power of electric bikes. 

• Listen to a previous Bottom-Up Revolution episode featuring Cary Westerbeck, fellow Bothell resident, Strong Towns member and founder of Bo-POP.

• Visit the Bo-POP (Bothellites for People-Oriented Places) website.

• Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

ReForm Shreveport has been very focused on action. They’ve cleaned up parks, piloted bike lanes, and even created an interactive map after a major storm threatened Shreveport’s water supply for thousands of residents. Tim and his colleagues are responding to the needs of their city and partnering with government and other local groups to get things done. That’s been particularly important in a somewhat economically divided city—something all too common in towns across America.

In this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel Quednau, we talk a lot about ReForm Shreveport, though toward the end we also chat about Tim’s new experience of home ownership with his wife, and why they chose to convert part of their house into an AirBnb.

• ReForm Shreveport website

• Get information about starting a Strong Towns Local Conversation group where you live!

• Read Daniel Herriges’ new series on incremental development.

• Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.

• Read an article by LeVette Fuller and watch her and Tim on a webcast about Shreveport.

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it 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.

In this conversation hosted by Rachel Quednau, Undem talks about the choice to stay in or return to your hometown; the connections, family, and traditions you get to experience when you make that sort of life for yourself; and how that doesn’t mean losing out on career opportunities. In particular, Undem has been helping her region think through the ways that the rise of remote work can allow people to commit to their towns for the long haul. She believes remote employment and Main Street can actually grow together and benefit one another, and she’s led some creative initiatives to help people see those opportunities through her organization, Growing Small Towns. Undem also hosts a podcast under the same name.

• Growing Small Towns website and podcast

• Rebecca Undem’s website

• Visit our employment page to learn about our current job openings.

• Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

He’s passionate about government transparency and accessibility—so much so that he held office hours in the local grocery store to meet with constituents.

This discussion gets into the nitty gritty of updating some zoning codes and figuring out government staffing in a midsize college town. Mayor Green also shares how he first got plugged into Strong Towns, his advice for people feeling disconnected from local decision-making, and why you should always carry a notebook.

• “Thank You from a Speculator” (land value tax video)

• Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity (the first Strong Towns book)

• Mayor Green’s Facebook page

• Visit our employment page to learn about our current job openings.

• Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it 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.

Sarah was with us throughout the summer writing important stories that use the Strong Towns approach to development and finance, and make excellent use of Urban3’s extensive research and data visualizations.

In this conversation hosted by Rachel Quednau, Sarah talks about her experience being a young planner fresh out of college, her experience as a lifelong Kansas Citian, and her hopes for the planning profession as she enters her career. Take a listen and make sure to check out her articles when you’re done.

• Read Sarah’s articles

• Strong Towns series on Kansas City

• Follow Sarah on Twitter and LinkedIn

• Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Tactical urbanism is an approach to public space that involves making what we at Strong Towns like to call “small bets”: small, temporary projects that require little to no money to execute, which allow people to test out a new design in a public space. It might be a crosswalk created with temporary paint or a bus stop enhanced with lightweight, moveable lawn furniture. The goal is to trial a concept and, if it works well, perhaps implement it more permanently down the line—striping that crosswalk in permanent paint, or installing a full-size bench at the bus stop.

Austin Taylor is helping lead tactical urbanism efforts in Park City, Utah, where he’s employed as a transportation planner. The program in Park City lets residents decide on and propose projects, then provides city funding and city help with the permitting process to execute them. The city even collects data on the impact of those projects.

And, as you’ll hear from Austin, that data shows success in slowing down cars and making people feel safer through street design changes—something we’ve been advocating for at Strong Towns for years.  Austin’s also a dedicated advocate for safer streets, leading the Bike Walk Provo organization, and he’s been featured at Strong Towns in the past. He’s a long time Strong Towns advocate!

• Bike Walk Provo website

• People-First Streets program

• Check out the many resources and key articles we’ve got about tactical urbanism over at the Action Lab.

• Hear Austin on our old podcast, It’s the Little Things, and read an article by Austin about tactical urbanism on Strong Towns.

• Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

In this conversation, Chuck talks about what got him motivated to write this book and why productive, resilient transportation is such an essential piece of a strong town. He shares some personal stories about transportation challenges in his hometown of Brainerd, Minnesota, which will probably resonate with almost everyone listening because they’re sadly common.

Chuck also shares his hopes for how this book could educate and inspire people to make the transportation in their communities better. And finally, he offers his advice for getting started learning about the transportation challenges in your city. Step one: Get out and walk. Step two: Observe how your neighbors are walking and traveling through your city, and where they might face dangers or obstacles.

 You can find Confessions of a Recovering Engineer at your local bookstore or anywhere else books are sold. 

• Learn more about our newest book and order it here.

• Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

But the episode also features a conversation on Cate’s previous role as the youngest city councilor in her hometown of Spartanburg, South Carolina, her experience organizing community events and downtown revitalization efforts, and even how she helped create a new dog park in her city.

Cate is dedicated to connecting people within communities who might not otherwise meet each other. She also believes in what she calls “the power of fun” — a belief which led her to start an annual beer and donuts run for charity, which grew to several hundred participants over the course of a few years. That’s just one example of the many cool projects Cate has led throughout her life. She encourages people to find the things they care about, connect with others who share their passions and join in those efforts to build stronger towns.

• Urban3 website

• Get your ticket to the Confessions Book Launch Party.

• Join a discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Group.

• Preorder Confessions of a Recovering Engineer by Charles Marohn before September 8 to get access to our special “30 Days of Confessions” video series.

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

In this conversation on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast hosted by Rachel Quednau, Tiffany talks about the trade-off between big-city excitement, and possibilities for connection and community that can sometimes come more easily in a smaller place.

Tiffany is deeply committed to understanding urban places and helping others to help shape their communities into stronger towns. She does this through her blog and Instagram account, Cities Decoded. And she’s also recently joined up with her local neighborhood association, so she shares the joys and challenges of neighborhood organizing. At the end of the day, Tiffany really wants to help people open their eyes, put down their phones and truly see their cities, to give real attention to the places and people around them

The interview concludes with a discussion about the power of religious communities and other sources of what Tiffany calls “associative culture”—something that’s becoming increasingly rare in this day and age. What is lost when we give up these places of connection?

• Cities Decoded website and Instagram.

• Read Strong Towns articles by Tiffany.

• Preorder Confessions of a Recovering Engineer by Charles Marohn before September 8 to get access to our special “30 Days of Confessions” video series. (And catch a sneak peak of the series here.)

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it 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.

That’s how Thomas Dougherty sees it. Dougherty grew up on a farm in Ohio, where he developed an early appreciation for, as he says, “getting his hands dirty,” and being a builder. Later in life he had the chance to visit the Netherlands, where he got a taste of traditional urban neighborhoods and design, and a real feeling of “home,” even though he was far away from his community of origin.

Dougherty recently finished a masters in architecture and the focus of his thesis was how to turn alleyways into productive space, especially for accessory-dwelling units or ADUs. He sees tremendous potential in the “human-scale” of alleys—their narrow lanes, their intimate proximity to peoples’ homes and the innate safety that comes from a cozy, enclosed space. This week on the Strong Towns website, we’ve been running a multipart series by Dougherty outlining the history of alleys and their potential future as places for more life and housing. We’re glad to share this interview featuring Dougherty on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast (hosted by Rachel Quednau) with you today.

• Read the American Alley series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

• “From Our House to ‘Godshuis,’” by Thomas Dougherty and Dr. Randall Smith, Strong Towns (September 2020).

• Preorder Confessions of a Recovering Engineer by Charles Marohn before September 8 to get access to our special “30 Days of Confessions” video series. (And catch a sneak peak of the series here.)

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it 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.

One genuinely fun and compelling story that we heard about from Lockport involves rubber duckies. Huge, people-sized rubber ducky statues, actually. During the pandemic in 2020, leaders and residents in Lockport were watching local businesses struggle to stay open as activity downtown dwindled. At the same time, a popular annual arts event was cancelled, and there was a desire to fill that gap with something else.

Wendy Streit, chairwoman of Lockport’s Summer Arts Committee, had an idea. What if the city partnered businesses that were doing well (like big box stores and other large businesses) with local shops and restaurants that were struggling? A comfortable business would sponsor an artistic, locally-made rubber ducky statue outside a struggling downtown businesses, and help shine a spotlight on that place and put a smile on Lockport residents’ and visitors’ faces. Streit also brought in a local business “passport” concept she’d seen in a neighboring city: patrons could collect stamps and win small prizes for visiting a certain number of businesses and duck statues.

The project has been a huge success, with businesses seeing increased activity and downtown coming back to life. In this interview on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast hosted by Rachel Quednau, Streit talks about the many partners she worked with to make this happen and demonstrates what a creative approach can do to help businesses succeed in tough times.

• Lockport Ducks website

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Mary Moriarty Jones is a native Hawaiian who lives in Honolulu. Her background is in civil engineering and real estate development, but she’s also a mom to five kids, and that’s really where this story starts. Jones was trying to walk her children to school on a perilously dangerous street, and that frustration with the street led her to stand up in city council meetings, lobby the city, and eventually, upon finding out the road was privately owned (a common occurrence in Hawaii), Jones actually bought the road herself.

Then she made the changes she had been begging the city to make: planting street trees, lowering the speed limit, protecting the sidewalk area from cars, and charging for parking—putting the money raised from parking fees toward the upkeep of the road.

Mary Jones is a dedicated Strong Towns advocate if ever there was one. So get ready to learn and be inspired by this interview.

• A couple of articles about Mary Jones’ quest for safer streets, from Civil Beat: “This Diamond Head Mom Found An Unusual Way To Fight City Hall” and “Diamond Head Mom Who Took Over Road Riles Neighbors By Charging For Parking”

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

So, encouraging and allowing incremental development is one of the single biggest things a city can do if it wants to become a strong town. Not only does this increase housing and small business options, it also puts power back into the hands of residents, allowing them to build wealth for their families and shape the future of their neighborhoods.

Today’s guest on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast is Jenifer Acosta, a community revitalizer and incremental developer working in the Tri-Cities region of Michigan, near the shores of Lake Huron. Her focus is on adaptive reuse projects—taking historic structures like old bank and newspaper buildings and turning them into updated housing and commercial spaces. She finds that sweet spot between preserving history while also modernizing and allowing these old buildings to take on new life so they can last another hundred years, even as the needs of a community change.

Acosta is particularly driven by a desire to create more rental and multifamily housing opportunities in a region that is mostly dominated by single family homes. She is also on the faculty of the Incremental Development Alliance, where she helps train other small-scale developers across the continent.

In this interview with Rachel Quednau, Acosta talks especially about her experience being a woman in a male-dominated industry—how she has found fellow female developers, built a support system, and persevered even when people in the industry didn’t always welcome her.

• Jenifer Acosta’s website

• Incremental Development Alliance website

• New Academy Course: Urban Design Principles for a Strong Town

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Lauren is dedicated to building up household resilience, which, for her family, means trying to develop more and more food options that they can raise, grow, forage, and hunt themselves. But she’ll also be the first to tell you that these sorts of efforts have to start small. She doesn’t own acres and acres of land, but instead, she’s found creative ways to practice producing local food and build up her efforts gradually. In addition, she and her husband have cultivated many important skills for self-sufficiency like sewing, building, and electrical work—and they’re always seeking to learn more.

But for Lauren, these sorts of skills are not just about sustaining her own family, they’re also about being part of a larger community. In this conversation on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast with Rachel Quednau, Lauren talks about how she’s gotten to know her neighbors after moving to the area a few years ago, and how they support each other through both the good times and the tough times.  

She offers advice for those—yes, even introverts—who want to better connect and make friends with their neighbors. Lauren’s focus is on abundance and sharing, on finding the bounty of talent and goodness in yourself and those around you, and strengthening a community with those building blocks. 

• “#DotheMath on Chicken Regulations,” by Lauren Fisher

• “5 Places to Meet New People to Join the Strong Towns Conversation,” by Lauren Fisher

• “Creating Housing Opportunities in a Strong Town” - our newest Strong Towns Academy course

• Sign up for Strong Towns email.

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

There’s something about a locally-crafted food or good that just instills in us a pride for our place. It’s about saying: “This is my community and here’s what we’re capable of making.”

Ilana Preuss is an urban planner and founder of a company called Recast City, which helps build communities where small-scale manufacturing businesses can thrive. She’s also the author of a new book called Recast Your City: How to Save Your Downtown with Small-Scale Manufacturing and today she joins Rachel Quednau on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast to talk about her work and why small-scale manufacturing can and should be the beating heart of your city.

Preuss shares how small-scale manufacturing can reinvigorate downtowns, build local pride and create meaningful opportunities for entrepreneurs to start businesses and scale up.  She also outlines the steps that local leaders can take to make space for this manufacturing renaissance to occur and shares examples of this work in action across the country. It’s about building on the energy and manufacturing already present in your community, and harnessing that to make your town stronger. 

• Recast City website

• Get the book: Recast Your City: How to Save Your Downtown with Small-Scale Manufacturing. Use code STRONG25 for 25% off anything from islandpress.org.

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Michael sees biking and walking as tools that enable people to get where they need to go in a safe, affordable, independent manner. These active transportation options can improve economic resilience, health, and a sense of community in any town, and Michael is working towards that in Kansas City. He brings to the organization his background in addressing housing issues, helping businesses thrive, and supporting the arts, all of which now inform his interdisciplinary role of creating a more bike- and walk-friendly Kansas City. 

Before we get into this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel Quednau, a quick reminder that if transportation issues matter to you, you definitely want to preorder Charles Marohn’s forthcoming book, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town. Transportation in America is getting worse and costing more. We have to do better, and this book shows you how. We’ve got a bunch of special offers for those who preorder, including class discounts, an exclusive online Q&A event, and immediate access to chapter one of the book. Visit confessions.engineer to preorder your copy today.

• BikeWalkKC website

• Submit your question—any question—about building Strong Towns via our Action Lab, and it might be answered by Charles Marohn and featured in an upcoming episode of the Strong Towns Podcast.

• Pre-order our new book: Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Eau Claire, like so many places across America, has experienced a decline in economic activity and local pride after important industries wound down operations and left the community in decades past. Volume One was born out of what Nick describes simply as a desire to “see cool things happen here,” and that spark has proven significant in helping to uplift the whole city.

In this conversation on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel Quednau, Nick talks about the powerful feedback loop that happens when you shine a spotlight on what’s going on in your town. This theme resonates across so many guests we’ve had on the show and featured in articles on the Strong Towns website: when people step up and start to care about their place and take action to make it better, others follow suit, and the bottom-up revolution begins. 

• Volume One magazine

• Outbroken - A Pandemic’s Effect on Wisconsin’s Food and Farms, a short film by Volume One

• Breaking Out of the Resource Trap: An Economic Plan for Resource-Based Communities (free e-book from Strong Towns)

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

We hear about Haile’s design firm, Fontaine Maury, which has, among other things, helped local businesses to sharpen their brand identity and make their mark in the community. Haile also helped start a local arts festival, and she’s on the boards of several organizations in Thomasville, including the hospital, a school board, the planning and zoning commission, and a local bank.

Don’t worry, we also get into how she juggles all of these volunteer duties, her small business, and her family. It’s all about priorities (plus maybe cutting television out of your life).

Finally, Haile talks about how all of her work is guided by Strong Towns principles of bottom-up action, incremental improvement, and financial resilience. Settle in and get inspired by this dedicated, active Strong Towns member, Haile McCollum.

• Fontaine Maury

• Haile McCollum on Instagram and Twitter

• The Due South Festival

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org

• Join our new course, “Aligning Transportation with a Strong Towns Approach” and, for a limited time only, get 20% off your purchase with discount code “NoStroads.” We’re also offering 20% off our whole 8-course bundle with code “LearnEverything.”

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

But he wasn’t always an activist. For much of his career, John was in charge of developing wellness programs and fitness centers for large corporations. He brings that insight and experience into his Active Towns work today, creating podcasts, articles, and videos—plus speaking around the world about making cities more walkable, bikeable, and generally active.

At Strong Towns, our focus is on building financial resilience in communities across North America, and many of the practices which build this financial health also result in healthier people: things like sidewalks that allow people to enjoyably and safely walk to a store or restaurant, beautiful parks that provide a place for people to be outside and also raise property values around them, bike paths that attract visitors and provide an easy route to work for residents…and so on.

John uses the term “activity assets” to describe all of these things and anything else that helps someone be physically active in their place. Listen to this episode of our Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel Quednau, and then keep an eye out for the activity assets in your own community. What does your town have going for it? And where could it do better? John Simmerman inspires valuable thought on how to build more active towns.

• Active Towns website and podcast

• Active Towns on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.

• Join our new course, “Aligning Transportation with a Strong Towns Approach” and, for a limited time only, get 20% off your purchase with discount code “NoStroads.” We’re also offering 20% off our whole 8-course bundle with code “LearnEverything.”

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

If this movement for bottom-up change and financial resilience has got you inspired to start taking action in your own community, it’s time to make your participation official by becoming a sustaining member of Strong Towns today. Visit strongtowns.org/membership to do so.

Today’s podcast episode features two fantastic advocates who are part of this movement. Nathan Chung is a Strong Towns member and master’s student of regional planning at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He’s also been part of a really cool effort in his town called the Amherst Mobile Market, which is bringing healthy, fresh, local food to sell in neighborhoods that don’t have much access to it. Nathan is exploring other mobile market efforts around the world, aiming to expand this model elsewhere.

In this conversation, Nathan and podcast host Rachel Quednau are joined by Ryan Karb, founder and farmer at Many Hands Farm Corps. He’s been part of this mobile market program, as well, and is dedicated to creating a resilient local food system in his community. 

In this conversation, Ryan and Nathan talk about how the Amherst Mobile Market program got started, the impact it’s made, and the way they’ve rooted all of their efforts in what their neighbors ask for and need. 

• Amherst Mobile Market

• Many Hands Farm Corps

• Nathan Chung’s website

• Other examples of mobile markets: Go Fresh Mobile Market in Springfield, Heiko in Germany, and Tokushimaru in Japan

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Join our new course, “Aligning Transportation with a Strong Towns Approach” and, for a limited time only, get 20% off your purchase with discount code “NoStroads.” We’re also offering 20% off our whole 8-course bundle with code “LearnEverything.”

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Right about now, some of you are probably very excited to hear more, while others are thinking, “What the heck does compost have to do with building strong towns?”  As Sophia explains in this conversation with Strong Towns Program Director Rachel Quednau, community composting programs do a lot to make our communities more economically resilient. First, they allow our neighborhoods and cities to be more self-reliant, taking the garbage we generate and—instead of pouring it into a landfill that occupies precious space and decreases the value and livability of everything around it, and costs money to maintain—we’re taking our food scraps and turning them into soil, which can then help us grow more food.

Almost every town in America is far from a goal of being able to sustain itself on locally grown food. A community composting network like the one Sophia leads in Baltimore helps neighborhoods to develop rich soil in which to grow healthy food. This process takes waste produced by the community and turns it into something productive that benefits the community. Everyone wins.

As Sophia will also share, the programs she’s worked with have helped generate job training, opportunities, and entrepreneurship, plus strengthen neighborly connections and a sense of ownership within neighborhoods.

Listen with an open mind to this conversation about community composting.

• Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR)

• ILSR’s Composting for Community program

• Community Composter Coalition, where you can find information about composting in your area

• Neighborhood Soil Rebuilders Composter Training Program

• Sign up for “Breaking Out of the Resource Trap: An Economic Plan for Resource-Based Communities” - June 8 webinar and ebook release

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Join our new course, “Aligning Transportation with a Strong Towns Approach” and, for a limited time only, get 20% off your purchase with discount code “NoStroads.” We’re also offering 20% off our whole 8-course bundle with code “LearnEverything.”

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

At Strong Towns, we’ve been having an ongoing conversation about the meaning of the term “gentrification” and the complex story behind this concept that is so often oversimplified in public discourse and media. It’s not as clean-cut as “poor people live here and now they’re getting kicked out and that’s bad.” Empty storefronts getting filled, streets getting fixed up and property values increasing are all good things—especially when we consider the alternative, which is those storefronts remaining vacant, those streets staying neglected, and the people who live there experiencing continued disinvestment and devaluation of their neighborhood.  

The problem comes when the people who live in a given community are excluded from the improvement and new investment that’s happening there. If we can help neighborhoods incrementally revitalize—if we can make space and opportunity for residents to start businesses, fix up homes and storefronts, and make their community a more prosperous place—then we’re accomplishing something different. This is what Incremental Development Alliance co-founder, Monte Anderson calls “gentlefication.”

This week’s Bottom-Up Revolution podcast episode features Coté Soerens, who opened a coffee shop in a lower-income immigrant neighborhood in Seattle. She’s participating in that positive reinvestment and revitalization, rooted in and for the community. Resistencia Coffee was founded a few years ago with the intention of being a neighborhood “third space”—a place to hang out and spend time with neighbors outside of the home or workplace.  

The coffee shop came into being through the efforts of so many community members, from investors who helped with start-up capital to contractors who helped build out the space, and many others. In this conversation with Strong Towns Program Director Rachel Quednau, you’ll hear about Coté’s dedication to helping her community grow and thrive, while also operating a financially sustainable business. You’ll learn about the essential need for listening to and collaborating with neighbors to make an effort like this successful. And you’ll also hear about the unique ways Coté has adapted her business and space during COVID.

• Resistencia website

• Strong Towns articles on gentrification

• Urban Fresh Food Collective

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.

• Join our new course, “Aligning Transportation with a Strong Towns Approach” and, for a limited time only, get 20% off your purchase with discount code “NoStroads.” We’re also offering 20% off our whole 8-course bundle with code “LearnEverything.”

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

In conversation with Strong Towns Program Director Rachel Quednau, Ms. Morris talks about how Build UP came to be, how these missions of education and neighborhood revitalization are entwined, and how the program has already made a positive impact on so many kids and families.  

Ms. Morris’s own background in addressing educational needs and rebuilding schools in the south after Hurricane Katrina—and all the resilience she gained as part of that experience—has prepared her for what she does now. She explains that different school types (charter, private and public) bring various possibilities and drawbacks when trying to approach education with a new and creative model like Build UP’s. She also describes how step-by-step, home-by-home rebuilding can help a neighborhood grow more economically strong and stay that way for many years to come.

Listen to this episode if you’re eager to hear about a creative approach to education that sees children as an integral part of their communities—rather than just little machines to be programmed and sent off to college or careers. We guarantee you’ll be inspired by Ms. Morris’s passion and dedication to everyone she works with.

• Build UP website

• “This Alabama school wants to turn its students into future homeowners, and build careers in the process,” by Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman (CNN.com, March 29, 2021)

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.

• Join our new course, “Aligning Transportation with a Strong Towns Approach” and, for a limited time only, get 20% off your purchase with discount code “NoStroads.” We’re also offering 20% off our whole 8-course bundle with code “LearnEverything.”

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Accordingly, Burns and Ross are collaborating with neighbors to get a cooperative laundromat started. In this interview, hosted by Strong Towns Program Director Rachel Quednau, Burns and Ross get into what it’s like to start a neighborhood-based effort like this one. They talk about all the important steps along the way, including gathering people together, doing your research, finding funding, and building support for the effort—always rooted in a dedication to listening to neighbors’ needs rather than dictating an outcome. It’s community engagement in the truest sense, from the bottom-up.

• Woodhill Community Co-op on Instagram

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.

• Join our new course, “Aligning Transportation with a Strong Towns Approach” and, for a limited time only, get 20% off your purchase with discount code “NoStroads.” We’re also offering 20% off our whole 8-course bundle with code “LearnEverything.”

• Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

They’ve been actively bringing Strong Towns conversations and ideas into their work at Habitat for Humanity and educating their colleagues about this message of financial resilience, built from the bottom up. They even started a podcast to discuss housing issues with fellow Texans.    

The Coats are also involved in statewide efforts to reform housing policy. Charles serves on the board of a group called Texans for Housing, which is currently working to promote more flexible zoning laws, eliminating parking minimums and other steps that will enable more Texans to access and afford their own homes.

In this episode of the Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel Quednau, Charles and Whitney share their insights on how to speak to people from different political persuasions and geographic backgrounds to find common ground on housing issues, and how to make arguments for Strong Towns principles in a manner that can best be received by the leader or resident being appealed to. For Charles and Whitney, efforts to build stronger towns start with the simple act of loving your place, observing where your neighbors struggle, and then taking the small steps to make life better and more resilient for all.

New Castle, as you’ll learn from Mayor Frye, is a city going through the same challenges of economic downturn, disinvestment and neglect that so many cities in the Rust Belt and Midwest have encountered during the last several decades.

However, like our guest last week (De’Amon Harges), Mayor Frye is focused on seeing the assets and gifts in his city, not just the problems.  He knows that the work of revitalization is not merely about fixing up old buildings or bringing jobs back, but about changing negative perceptions. He wants residents and outsiders to see New Castle, not as a place of blight, poverty, or crime, but as a beautiful city that can thrive and is thriving.

At the end of our conversation, Mayor Frye shares his thoughts for other leaders whose cities may be in a similar economic situation. One piece of advice? “Stay hopeful, and don’t become complacent.”

Harges is dedicated to listening to his neighbors, hearing their stories and drawing out their gifts and talents. His work is rooted in the belief that everyone has something to offer their community, and the most meaningful transformation will happen when we focus on those assets and abundance—not on what a person or a neighborhood lacks.  

In this conversation, we talk about the power of listening to help build strong towns and make our communities more resilient.

Cohousing is a term that really applies to the way most humans live around the world today and throughout history: it’s living with extended family and friends in close proximity, rather than having individuals and single households all occupying private, separate dwelling places. In Lisa’s case, the cohousing community she helped found, Evans Oaks, is made up of several small homes, clustered together, with lots of shared space and a commitment to doing life together.  This isn’t some socialist commune, it’s folks who want to live close to their neighbors, share some duties and expenses, and have a support system around them.

We feature Lisa’s story today because it’s a wonderful example of someone envisioning a strong community and incrementally building it with her neighbors.  The lessons she shares today—about patience and dedication and committing to deep engagement with one’s community—bear relevance even beyond a particular living situation. We hope it provides a fresh way to think about how we choose to live, no matter who your household or housemates are.

Jason and his colleagues approach housing and development with an incremental mindset, helping build up streets and neighborhoods step by step. They engage in tactical projects of many sizes, helping rehab homes, support affordable housing and invest where it’s needed most. 

Listen to the episode to understand the nuanced lens through which Jason views issues of housing access and wealth disparities. He knows that building up families and neighborhoods isn’t a matter of throwing tons of subsidies at the problem nor a matter of hoping the market will solve everything.  Rather, he believes nonprofits, governments and for-profit companies can work together to increase prosperity for everyone.

• Jason T. Hyman’s business website

• Jason Hyman on Twitter

• DT3M.com (Do the Things That Matter)

• Join us for our upcoming “Late Night with Strong Towns” event on April 8 at 8pm ET! If you’re a Strong Towns member, you should already have received your invite via email. If you’re not a member, we’d love to have you join the movement today, then you’ll receive your invite. (If you’re a member and haven’t seen your invite yet, email alexa@strongtowns.org and she’ll help you out.)

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.

• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

You can learn more about the contest and vote in this match-up by visiting strongtowns.org/strongesttown

You can learn more about the contest and vote in this match-up by visiting strongtowns.org/strongesttown

• Studio GWA website

• Join us for our upcoming “Late Night with Strong Towns” event on April 8! If you’re a Strong Towns member, you should already have received your invite via email. If you’re not a member, we’d love to have you join the movement today, then you’ll receive your invite. (If you’re a member and haven’t seen your invite yet, email alexa@strongtowns.org and she’ll help you out.)

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.

• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

Both grew up in West Virginia, left, and then felt a pull to come back home and serve their communities. Their work is oriented towards bottom-up action, focused on listening to resident stories and helping lift them up as leaders—not tell them what to do or push them down a specific path.

Jenny and Amanda share what drew them to this work, how they do honest and authentic community engagement and then at the end, they cap it off with a ton of great advice for everyone out there who might want to get better at taking incremental, locally-based action to serve neighbors and build stronger towns.

• West Virginia Community Development Hub website

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.

• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

It all starts with Alex beginning to fix up a historic property called Lexington House. That turned into providing pop-up space for local businesses, room for local arts creation and a vision for a renewed community hub in this historic town. Danny, who’s an environmental planner and representative on the Otsego County board near Lexington, got plugged into Alex’s project, and he’s bringing his knowledge of local regulations to help with the process—and hopefully clear some of those regulations away so this project can flourish.

What you’ll hear in this conversation is Alex and Danny’s deep dedication to taking small bets and incrementally strengthening their community. They’re tapping into the history of their place, while also building on the strength and passion of their neighbors here and now.

Whether you’re interested in supporting local business growth, revitalization historic spaces or investing in community development—these are all key aspects of building Strong Towns. And Alex and Danny are approaching this work with a bottom-up mindset, rooted in their place.  Like all of our guests on this show, Alex and Danny are people who genuinely care about their town and stepped up to make it stronger.

• Lexington Arts and Science website

• Lexington Arts and Science on Instagram

• Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity by Charles Marohn

• Advice, case studies and tools for ending parking minimums in your town

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

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Abby and Dennis have been fighting the good fight in Kansas City for many years now, and they—along with their colleagues and partner organizations like Urban3, the Incremental Development Alliance and, of course, Strong Towns—have helped move Kansas City in a positive direction.

Like many communities, it’s a city that has lost population over the last several decades, and is struggling to regain its financial footing. As Dennis states in our conversation, the problems facing this community—overbuilt and overextended infrastructure, chronic disinvestment in the urban core, redlining and exclusion, fault financial planning—took decades to put in place. So they’re going to take decades to undo. But Abby and Dennis are in it for the long haul.  

Through concerted and creative efforts to know their neighbors, listen to resident concerns and educate people on the city’s trajectory, these planning professionals are going against the grain and fighting for the city they love.

• Gould Evans website

• Strong Towns’ Kansas City series and ebook

• Upzoned podcast

• Rep. Jake Auchincloss & Rep. Mike Gallagher on the Strong Towns Podcast (plus video and transcript)

• Enter the Strongest Town contest today!

• 2021 Local-Motive Tour

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

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• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

In this conversation, Kelly discusses what got her fired up about food and farming, and how she decided to run for office—plus what that was all like during the pandemic year of 2020.  And she talks about how the Strong Towns approach inspires her work.

We’ve been honored to feature a couple local elected officials on this show now and it’s always great to hear about how they made that journey from advocate to leader. Just last week, we were also hearing from a farmer and we’ve had on other guests who are involved in food growing and selling. These are such important building blocks for a strong town—access to local food, and dedicated, thoughtful local leaders.

• Transition Rochester Facebook page

• An article about the ‘Plant a Seed’ initiative

• Enter the Strongest Town contest today!

• 2021 Local-Motive Tour

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

With hard work and dedication, he turned that garbage-strewn space into a flourishing garden, and has since expanded into multiple other farm sites throughout the Broderick area. Three Sisters Gardens and Melbourne’s process are deeply inspired by his Hunkpapa Lakota heritage.  The name “Three Sisters” comes from three crops that are important in indigenous culture and cuisine: corn, beans and squash.

Melbourne sees farming as a chance to bring back the land into productive use; to feed neighbors who don’t have access to affordable, fresh food; and to help guide young people down a supportive path during their youth.  His farms employ teens in the community, giving them the mentorship and purpose that he didn’t have when he was young, to hopefully help keep them out of trouble.  He says he’s moved from “plotting to planting” and now he gets to help young people make that same shift.

Our Strong Towns Strength Test—a sort of litmus test to determine if your community is on track to being financially resilient—asks the question “If you wanted to eat only locally-produced food for a month, could you?” For most people, the answer is no. 

Three Sisters Gardens is working to change that.  They’re taking neglected land and using it to grow precious resources—food—to feed the community, and Melbourne is mentoring the next generation of neighbors and farmers in the process.  They’re helping move the surrounding neighborhoods toward food resilience, enabling them to support themselves, steward their own resources and build long-term financial stability.

• Three Sisters Gardens website

• Three Sisters Gardens instagram page, where you’ll find photos and videos

• Center for Land-Based Learning

• “This Modern Farmer Employs At-Risk Youth to Keep Them Off the Streets” - an article featuring Mr. Melbourne in Modern Farmer

• Enter the Strongest Town contest today!

• 2021 Local-Motive Tour

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.

• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

Sally isn’t someone who fits neatly into a Democrat or Republican box and he’s found himself really frustrated with those boxes in the first place.  His show brings on guests to talk about electoral reform—how we break out of this two-party system and build a democracy that truly listens to what people want.  So much of that work starts at the local level. Since Sally and Bottom-Up Revolution host, Rachel Quednau, both live in Massachusetts, they got the chance to talk a little bit about some local electoral issues in this episode, including a recent ballot measure on ranked choice voting.  

We hope as you listen to this show, you’ll start thinking about how your state and local elections could grow to be more just and democratic. Sally gives some great advice for how to get started.  

As a side note, we’re blown away that Sally finds time to do his podcast and work a full time job and be a dad to four kids, as well as a foster parent.  Plus he’s a former standup comedian! Like many of guests on previous episodes, we see Sally taking a skill and passion of his—public speaking, entertainment, engaging audiences—and turning it towards an important issue he cares about to benefit his community and make his place more resilient.

• You Don’t Have to Yell podcast

• Listen to Charles Marohn on a recent episode of You Don’t Have to Yell

• Fairvote.org

• Strong Towns Action Lab

• 2021 Local-Motive Tour

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

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• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

Jen Wolosin, like so many Strong Towns advocates, is someone who humbly observed where people in her city were struggling and then stepped up to try and change the situation. In her case, it was seeing how dangerous a nearby street was for kids trying to bike or walk to school.  It was a problem for her own children, but she also recognized how many other children were being impacted too—especially children who couldn’t get a ride from a parent instead.

So Jen investigated. She contacted people, she showed up at meetings, she built a network of fellow advocates, and eventually she founded a group called “Parents for Safe Routes” to make local streets safer.  She went on to sit on several local committees and eventually, took that next step to run for city council, and won.

We know you’ll learn a lot from Jen’s story of transforming from someone who saw a problem, to someone who was taking action, and eventually, to someone who would get to make city decisions as an elected official. She’s got tons of advice for you at the end, too, about how you can embark on a journey like hers.

• Jen Wolosin’s website

• Parents for Safe Routes website

• Chattanooga Civics podcast

• Strong Towns Action Lab

• 2021 Local-Motive Tour

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

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• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

We talk about what happens when you open your eyes to the stories around you. We talk about how art can help people see things differently and even build stronger towns.  We talk about the revelations that take place when we look closely at the history of our cities. And yes, we talk a little about Mayor Pete Buttigieg too.

• West.SB website

• The “More People” series on West.SB

• “Lacopo’s Pizzeria” photo essay on West.SB

• This Day in South Bend podcast

• Jacob Titus’ website

• Jacob Titus on Instagram

• “Is South Bend a Prosperous College Town or a Struggling Rust Belt City?” by Emily Badger (New York Times)

• “For Restaurants in the Pandemic, Immense Challenges...and a Glimmer of Hope” by Rachel Quednau (Strong Towns)

• Strong Towns Action Lab

• 2021 Local-Motive Tour

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

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• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

A Strong Towns member, her efforts are focused on workforce development, particularly in helping young people find vocations in science, technology, engineering and math fields. We see her work being aligned with Strong Towns goals around supporting local businesses and encouraging a thriving local economy. (A brief note: We recorded this last year and we’re just now getting it out so bear with us if we have some 2020 references.)

At the end of the episode, we also hear from a listener about the impact last week’s show with Cary Westerbeck had on him. And we share this week’s big Strong Towns announcement about our new Action Lab—where you can search for resources, read success stories and case studies, and get help with the efforts you’re undertaking to build a strong town where you live.

• Strong Towns Action Lab

• 2021 Local-Motive Tour

• Wilson’s Career Readiness Consultancy

• Listen to Latoya on a previous episode of It’s the Little Things (our old podcast)

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

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• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

We’re kicking off the 2021 season of the podcast with an interview with a long-time Strong Towns member, Cary Westerbeck. Cary is an architect and principle of his own architecture firm, as well as an advocate who founded a Strong Towns local conversation group in his community of Bothell, Washington.

We’ve been wanting to have him on the show for a while now because his story is one that so many people can learn from. There are probably a lot of you out there who’ve thought at one point or another, “I wish I could find other advocates in my neighborhood who care about making our community more resilient, and then work together to get stuff done.” Well, Cary did just that. 

In this conversation, you’ll learn how he used existing community platforms to find interested neighbors, gathered people to learn about Strong Towns concepts together, shared resources with one another, and eventually got three of their members elected to the city planning commission—taking action on a whole bunch of local issues along the way.

You might event want to take notes during this one because there’s a lot to take in, and so much of it is things you can get started on right now in your own neighborhood. And we hope you do.

• 2021 Local-Motive Tour

• Bo-POP website

• Westerbeck Architecture website

• O-POP website

• Incremental Development Alliance

• Strong Indy

• Strong Towns - Sioux Falls

• The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup

• Walkable City by Jeff Speck

• Jefferson Beer Supply

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.

• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

Sheleita also talks about the ways she’s taken initiative to help residents in her town stay in the loop about what’s going on in local government. And she shares how she’s working to address the problems government isn’t always stepping up to solve.  Because she’s worked with government in the past, she really understands and empathizes with both sides of these challenges: the government side and the concerned citizen side of things.

Sheleita is a model for bottom-up, revolutionary action and we’re pleased to share this conversation with you.

• Sheleita Miller’s website

• Heart to Heart w/Sheleita Miller (radio show)

• Amrita’s podcast: 413 Ethnography

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

Sara Joy is dedicated to bottom-up, incremental action, good stewardship of land and resources, and neighborhood engagement.  What’s so inspiring about the Proximity Project model is that it enriches everyone who gets involved. Churches can benefit by becoming a greater part of their neighborhoods, knowing their neighbors, being devoted to their mission of welcoming—as well as tapping into opportunities for greater financial stability by finding ways to better use their land. And neighborhoods benefit from the resources and community spaces that a church can offer. 

Truly, everyone is made better off when our local institutions, neighbors and places are more integrated and acquainted with one another.

This conversation may be of special interest to anyone who’s part of a faith community and wants to see that community become a more full and active presence in their neighborhood, but we think it will really interest anyone who cares about more tightly knitting the fabric of their city.

• Proximity Project website

• The Redemptive Placemaking Toolkit

• The Embedded Church podcast

• Walk Tasman Drive website

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

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• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

Sam talks about a process he worked on to transform a downtown street into a pedestrian-friendly public space.  This conversation walks you step-by-step through the journey Sam and his neighbors undertook to make this happen. He highlights the importance of building coalitions and meeting everyone on their terms, understanding their values and concerns in order to work together to strengthen their city. Sam also discusses the need to choose your battles carefully, to test things out before making permanent change, and to ask for feedback from neighbors at every step along the way.

This should be a very educational conversation for anyone who’s looking to make streets more welcoming to people on foot and improve public spaces in their cities. We know that these sorts of steps create more economically productive communities—where local businesses thrive, where people develop civic pride, and where public resources are put to their best use. 

• Sam Nabi’s website, featuring his writing, music, croissant reviews and lots more interesting projects

• Gaukel.ca website, all about this pedestrian street

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.

• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

If you’re a member, thank you! We’re floored by all that you do and honored to get to play a small part in moving you to action. 

If you’re not a member and you’re looking at that list thinking, “Well, I volunteer in my community, I share Strong Towns articles, I work with my neighbors to improve my city…” Then it’s time you make your commitment official and join this movement. Visit strongtowns.org/membership to join today.

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Today’s guest is Krista Fancher, a Strong Towns member who teaches at a unique high school program called the Innovation Diploma at the Mount Vernon School in Atlanta, Georgia. Their approach to learning is very hands-on and encourages entrepreneurship and innovation—exactly the sorts of skills young people need these days to grow into dedicated citizens who make their communities strong.

Bottom-Up Revolution host and Program Director, Rachel Quednau, had the honor of working with some of her students this semester on a project where they explored housing issues and how to adapt existing buildings to create more housing opportunities.  Krista is devoted to helping young people learn, grow and thrive.  Whether you’ve got kids of your own or have the chance to work with young people as a coach, mentor, or just a doting aunt or uncle—we know you’ll learn from Krista’s perspective and see how important our young people are as we think about building strong towns for the future.

At the end of the episode, we also take a moment to shout-out some of those 16% of Strong Towns members who recently ran for office and many who currently hold elected office.

• Mount Vernon School - Innovation Diploma program

• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

• Innovation Diploma Students’ Getting into Good Trouble Podcast

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

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• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

Through it all, he’s been dedicated to serving others, particularly in response to the ways that he himself has been served. For example, as a young person, he was part of the Boys and Girls Club which was a guiding force in his life, and as an adult, he wanted to give back so he joined the board of the Boys and Girls Club where he lived and later became its CEO.  

In this interview, Chris talks about the ways that community supported him during hard times, which is what led him to his current project, creating an indoor market and food hall in his neighborhood in Milwaukee, WI—a space where he hopes neighbors can connect, find community and spend time together.

Chris typifies a strong community-builder who looks at the skills he has and asks how he can put them to work to strengthen his neighborhood from the bottom-up—empowering residents and business owners, transforming an underutilized space into a community gathering place, and all in a manner that is focused at the neighborhood-level.

• North Ave Market website

• “Community and inclusion behind vision for North Avenue Market” from On Milwaukee

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

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• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

Lawson has worked in both local government and private consulting, helping cities like Los Angeles and Miami use data to understand how things are working and how to make them work better.

What we especially appreciate about Chelsea is the way that she’s taken her passion for data analysis and found a ton of creative ways to make her town stronger using those skills. Whether she’s working on a professional project or just walking through her neighborhood, she’s doing the math on what’s going to create the best return on investment and steward local resource well.

In this interview, you’ll learn about how even the trash in your garbage can plays an important role in shaping the future of your city, and how you can tie personal goals with community betterment. Chelsea shows us that doing the math is an essential part of building a strong town.

• Social Impact Calculator for public investment and policy decisions

• Optimal Self (life game) dashboard and instructions

• Clean Streets Santa Monica Community Organizing

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.

• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

Adam Trott is a Strong Towns member, an architect and a long-time Erie resident who’s passionate about seeing his city be financially prosperous for all residents.  Roland Slade is a newer Erie resident with media chops and neighborhood know-how—who has no less dedication to seeing his city be a place where everyone can thrive, regardless of which neighborhood they live in.  

Together, Adam and Roland are part of a community group called Connect Urban Erie, which is fighting a multimillion dollar road expansion project that would run a massive volume of cars along Erie’s waterfront—an area already dominated by a large highway.  Adam, Roland and their neighbors have been tirelessly advocating to instead transform this waterfront roadway into a space where people can safely walk and bike, and enjoy the beautiful asset of Lake Erie.

We know you’ll learn a lot from this conversation about Adam and Roland’s work in Erie. Make sure to stay tuned to the end where they share a ton of fantastic pieces of advice for all of you out there who might be working through similar challenges in your city. 

• Connect Urban Erie website

• Connect Urban Erie instagram (lots of great videos here)

• “PennDOT Trying to Solve the Wrong Problem” by Michael Fuhrman (GoErie.com)

• “Skip the Highway; Build a Boulevard,” by Lisa Austin and Adam Trott (Erie Reader)

• “PennDOT’s bayfront plan fails to prioritize people,” by Maxwell J. Hentosh (GoErie.com)

• “Protesting Erie’s Bayfront Expansion,” by Natalee Stinebiser (The Gannon Knight)

• Send us your own voicemail about the small (or big) thing you’re doing to make your town stronger. Just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to rachel@strongtowns.org.

• Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.

• Support this show and our many other resources for helping your town grow stronger by becoming a member today.

Recognizing that his community in the Riverwest and Harambee neighborhoods of Milwaukee was not well served by things like fresh food access and other resources for healthy living, he founded a store called Center Street Wellness, which sells products for mental and physical wellbeing, mostly from local makers. The shop gives him a chance to craft a business around something he cares deeply about, as well as a chance for local, small-scale entrepreneurs to sell their wares in a storefront—something most do not otherwise get to do.

Make sure to stay tuned til the end of the episode, where we also feature a listener voicemail from a Strong Towns advocate sharing his short story of taking action. Send your own voicemail to rachel@strongtowns.org.

Tune in next week for the first full episode and, in the meantime, please send in a listener voicemail sharing some small (or big) way you've taken action to make your town stronger lately. Email voicemails to rachel@strongtowns.org