The Bottom-Up Revolution
 

The Bottom-Up Revolution

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This podcast features stories of the Strong Towns movement in action. Hosted by Tiffany Owens Reed, it’s all about how regular people have stepped up to make their communities more economically resilient, and how others can implement these ideas in their own places. We’ll talk about taking concrete action steps, connecting with fellow advocates to build power, and surviving the bumps along the way—all in the pursuit of creating stronger towns.

Episodes

Strongest Town 2021: Lockport, IL

Tuesday Mar 30, 2021

Tuesday Mar 30, 2021

Welcome to a special Strongest Town contest episode, featuring a competitor in the Final Four round of our competition: Lockport, IL. Our guest is the mayor, Steve Streit. You can learn more about the contest and vote in this match-up by visiting strongtowns.org/strongesttown

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Aaron Holverson and Michael Smith: An Architect and a Planner in Pursuit of Stronger Towns

Thursday Mar 25, 2021

Thursday Mar 25, 2021

Michael Smith is a long-time Strong Towns member who joins this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast along with his colleague, architect Aaron Holverson. Together they work at Studio GWA, a planning and architecture firm based in Rockford.  In this conversation, we discuss a historic revitalization project in a core neighborhood of Rockford, the challenges that come with a project like this, and also why the street and surrounding blocks matter to the success of a place like this. It’s a great lesson in what it takes to bring an old building back to life—certainly not a piece of cake—but also a lesson in what can happen when a community has a place to feel proud of.

Additional Show Notes

  • 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.

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Amanda Workman Scott and Jenny Totten: Supporting and Developing Rural Leaders

Thursday Mar 18, 2021

Thursday Mar 18, 2021

Welcome to another episode of the Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, featuring two inspiring women who serve at the West Virginia Community Development Hub. Amanda Workman Scott is the Director of Community Engagement and Jenny Totten is Community Development Coordinator.  

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.

Additional Show Notes

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Alex Rodriguez and Danny Lapin: Reactivating a Historic Space for the Whole Community

Thursday Mar 11, 2021

Thursday Mar 11, 2021

In this episode of the Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, we’ve got another fantastic, inspiring duo: Strong Towns members Alex Rodriguez and Danny Lapin.  Together, they’re part of a historic preservation, revitalization, community building, business incubating project in the town of Lexington, NY, called Lexington Arts and Science.

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.

Additional Show Notes

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Abby Kinney and Dennis Strait: People-Centered Urban Planning

Thursday Mar 04, 2021

Thursday Mar 04, 2021

In this episode, we’re joined by two Strong Towns advocates, architect Dennis Strait and planner Abby Kinney. Both work at the firm Gould Evans, based in Kansas City, MO. You may know Abby because she hosts one of our other podcasts: Upzoned, where she and Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn, discuss a topic from the week’s news with a Strong Towns lens. 

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.

Additional Show Notes

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Kelly Rae Kirkpatrick: A Strong Towns Advocate on her City Council

Thursday Feb 25, 2021

Thursday Feb 25, 2021

Today’s guest is Kelly Rae Kirkpatrick— a Strong Towns reader and advocate based in Rochester, MN who owns her own local business, has been very active in food access issues and was recently elected to the Rochester City Council. She had actually been sworn in just a couple days before we recorded (which is why this conversation was pretty short—she's quite busy!).  

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.

Additional Show Notes

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Alfred Melbourne: Growing Food, Growing Resilience

Thursday Feb 18, 2021

Thursday Feb 18, 2021

Today’s episode features Alfred Melbourne, who runs a farm called Three Sisters Gardens in Broderick, California.  Melbourne hasn’t always been a farmer. In fact, he spent several years of his adult life in prison.  But when he got out in 2016, he connected with an elder who pointed him towards a vacant piece of land in his city.  

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.

Additional Show Notes

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Dan Sally: Moving Past the Two-Party System

Thursday Feb 04, 2021

Thursday Feb 04, 2021

This episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution Podcast features Dan Sally, a guy with his own podcast called You Don’t Have to Yell.

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.

Additional Show Notes

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Jen Wolosin: Stepping Up to Run for Public Office

Thursday Jan 28, 2021

Thursday Jan 28, 2021

A couple months ago, we came across an article—probably the result of a Google alert—in which a woman running for city council in Menlo Park, CA mentioned Strong Towns in a discussion about the need for incremental housing development. We followed her story and were excited to learn that she won her election. Now we’re pleased to feature her on our latest episode of the Bottom-Up Revolution podcast.

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.

Additional Show Notes

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Jacob Titus: Using Art and Stories to Strengthen Your City

Thursday Jan 21, 2021

Thursday Jan 21, 2021

Jacob Titus is a photographer, filmmaker, and designer and creator, living in South Bend, Indiana. In this conversation, we talk about the publication he started, West.SB, and how he uses photography and writing to tell the stories of his city—its people, its places.

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.

Additional Show Notes

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