The Bottom-Up Revolution
 

The Bottom-Up Revolution

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The Bottom-Up Revolution features the stories of the Strong Towns movement in action. Hosted by Tiffany Owens Reed and Norm Van Eeden Petersman, 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. Each episode features a Strong Towns advocate who is making positive change in their community.

Episodes

Abby Kinney and Dennis Strait: People-Centered Urban Planning

Mar 4, 2021

Mar 4, 2021

30 min

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.

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

Feb 25, 2021

Feb 25, 2021

17 min

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.

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Alfred Melbourne: Growing Food, Growing Resilience

Feb 18, 2021

Feb 18, 2021

21 min

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.

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Dan Sally: Moving Past the Two-Party System

Feb 4, 2021

Feb 4, 2021

24 min

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.

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Jen Wolosin: Stepping Up to Run for Public Office

Jan 28, 2021

Jan 28, 2021

29 min

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.

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Jacob Titus: Using Art and Stories to Strengthen Your City

Jan 21, 2021

Jan 21, 2021

37 min

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.

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Latoya Wilson: Helping Young People Prepare for the Future

Jan 14, 2021

Jan 14, 2021

20 min

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.

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Cary Westerbeck: Uniting Advocates to Build Strong Towns

Jan 7, 2021

Jan 7, 2021

30 min

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.

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Sheleita Miller: Bridging Divides Between Neighbors and Government

Dec 17, 2020

Dec 17, 2020

25 min

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.

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Sara Joy Proppe: Empowering Churches to Connect with Their Neighborhoods

Dec 10, 2020

Dec 10, 2020

33 min

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.

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