The Bottom-Up Revolution

This week’s Bottom-Up Revolution podcast guest is De’Amon Harges. Based in Indianapolis, Harges’ work focuses on deep listening and asset-based community development. He’s the executive director of a nonprofit called The Learning Tree, a board member of the Grassroots Grantmakers Association, recent recipient of Wesleyan Investive’s Tom Locke Innovative Leader Award, and a member of the Parish Collective. Perhaps the best way to describe him, though, is by his title, “the roving listener.”

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.

This week’s Bottom-Up Revolution podcast guest is Lisa Leslie, who helped lead an effort to create a cohousing community with 11 families in Silverton, Oregon. Lisa and her husband went from living with two other families (including Strong Towns Content Manager, John Pattison’s family) in a cooperative house, to dreaming of building a full-fledged cohousing community, to seeing that dream come to fruition this past year.

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.

In this episode, we talk with Jason Hyman, an urban planner, real estate professional and business owner based in Houston, Texas. His firm, Jason T. Hyman, aims to “bridge the generational wealth gap found in minority communities through creative applications of urban planning, community engagement, and responsible development.”

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.

Additional Show Notes

• 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.

Welcome to a special Strongest Town contest episode, featuring a competitor in the Final Four round of our competition: Bentonville, AR. Guests include: Tyler Overstreet (Planning Services Manager for the City of Bentonville) and Shelli Kerr (Comprehensive Planning Manager for the City of Bentonville). You can learn more about the contest and vote in this match-up by visiting strongtowns.org/strongesttown

Welcome to a special Strongest Town contest episode, featuring a competitor in the Final Four round of our competition: Bismarck, ND.  Guests include: Daniel Nairn (Senior Planner for the City of Bismarck) and Dawn Kopp (CEO of Bismarck's Downtowners Association).

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

Welcome to a special Strongest Town contest episode, featuring a competitor in the Final Four round of our competition: Oxford, MS.  Guests include Robyn Tannehill (mayor), Jon Maynard (President and CEO for the Oxford-Lafayette County Economic Development Foundation, and President and CEO of the Oxford-Lafayette County Chamber of Commerce) and Ben Requet (Planning Director.)

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

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

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.

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

• 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.

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

• 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.

• 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.