The Bottom-Up Revolution

Nick Meyer started Volume One magazine when he was fresh out of college as a way to help show his fellow citizens of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the life and vitality happening all around them. Now, 20 years later, the publication has grown tremendously, and expanded into a retail space, cohost, and creator of many local events, and an all-around supporter of the Eau Claire community. 

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. 

Additional Show Notes

• 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.

It’s a special week for us at Strong Towns. It’s our Member Week, where we honor and celebrate the incredible people who are members of this movement all across the country. You’ve heard several of their stories on this podcast in the past, and there will be many more to come.

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. 

Additional Show Notes

• 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.

In today’s episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, we’re talking with Sophia Hosain, who’s helping to lead a community composting initiative headed up by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a long-time friend and partner of the Strong Towns movement.

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.

Additional Show Notes

• 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.

If you heard that a new coffee shop was opening in a lower-income neighborhood, what would be your reaction? In most bigger cities and plenty of smaller ones, the coffee shop is a universal symbol for gentrification. It means that this neighborhood has been designated as the new trendy hotspot and rents are about to go up.

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.

Additional Show Notes

• 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.

You might be familiar with food co-ops or housing co-ops. But how about a laundry co-op? A group of community members in the Woodhill neighborhood of Cleveland are starting just that. Marilyn Burns and Leah Ross are part of a group of residents who, through surveys and outreach, learned that a majority of their neighbors do not have access to a nearby washer or dryer. This may seem like a small thing, but it’s such a fundamental and basic component of human dignity. Being able to show up at school or a job with clean clothes—especially during this time of COVID when everyone is more attuned to hygiene concerns—should be something everyone’s able to do.

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.

Additional Show Notes

• 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.

This week’s Bottom-Up Revolution podcast features Mayor Chris Frye, who’s been leading the city of New Castle, Pennsylvania, since January 2020.  Before running for mayor, his background wasn’t in politics but in social work and community service. He’s a husband and father of three—and he’s utterly dedicated to helping his city grow stronger. He’s also New Castle’s first black mayor, and a Republican. 

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.”