The Bottom-Up Revolution

Today’s guest was on an episode of It’s the Little Things, this show’s former iteration, but we brought her back because she’s working on some cool new initiatives. Her name is Latoya Wilson and she’s based in New Jersey.

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.

Additional Show Notes

• 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.

• 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.

Welcome to the first episode of the Bottom-Up Revolution Podcast in 2021—our Strong Towns Year of Action! All year long, we’re going to be sharing resources, ideas and opportunities for you to take action to make your community stronger and more resilient.

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.

Additional Show Notes

• 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 Miller is an accountant and citizen activist based in Gary, Indiana. It’s a community that’s been through some serious economic challenges, but it’s also Sheleita’s hometown, and she’s dedicated to making it stronger.  In this conversation, she talks about what drew her to the Strong Towns movement, particularly with her background in economics and accounting, and her on-the-ground knowledge of why doing the math and determining the long-term impacts of public investments is so important. 

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.

Additional Show Notes

• 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.

In this episode, we talk with Sara Joy Proppe, an accomplished and interdisciplinary woman with a passion for cities, stories, and the Church.  She’s an experienced real estate developer, educator, writer, podcaster, urban planner and the founder of a unique organization called Proximity Project, which empowers churches to connect their mission and their story to their physical place in the neighborhood.

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.

Additional Show Notes

• 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.

• 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.

In this episode of the Bottom-Up Revolution Podcast, we talk with Sam Nabi, a business owner, urban advocate, and more who lives in Kitchener, Ontario.

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. 

Additional Show Notes

• 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.

It’s Member Week here at Strong Towns, and something our president, Chuck Marohn, shared on Monday is that Strong Towns members are some of the most civically engaged people we know.  In a recent survey, over 50% said they’re volunteering in their communities. Nearly half said they had met with an elected official. 16% have actually run for office themselves! And nearly all of our members have shared Strong Towns articles and ideas with their neighbors.

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.

Additional Show Notes

• 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.

• 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.

Chris Harris-Wimsatt went through a lot of hardship in his childhood. He went on to become an Air Force officer, an ROTC educator and worked for several major companies. He’s also a foster and adoptive parent to 20 children.  

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.

Additional Show Notes

• 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.

• 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.

Chelsea Lawson is a Strong Towns member who’s putting her data-oriented mind to work to make her city and other cities stronger.

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.

Additional Show Notes

• 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.

In this week’s episode, we hear from two dedicated Strong Towns advocates who are working with their neighbors to fight a highway project in their city of Erie, Pennsylvania.  

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. 

Additional Show Notes

• 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.

In this week’s episode, we hear from Alexander Hagler, an entrepreneur and urban gardener based in Milwaukee, WI.

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.