The Bottom-Up Revolution

The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…Building the Future With Wisdom From the Past Oct 31, 2024

Rik Adamski is the founder and president of Ash+Lime, a planning firm that strives to help cities and neighborhoods create thriving places by drawing on the wisdom of the past. Originally from Chicago, Adamski consulted for several of the most prominent planning organizations in the U.S. before moving to Texas and embracing a more nimble, actionable and participatory approach to developing communities.

In this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, Adamski joins host Tiffany Owens Reed to discuss his approach to urban planning, the challenges of implementing a new planning approach in cities, and the importance of community engagement and incrementalism.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Local recommendations:
- Ten Bells Tavern (reopening soon).
- Texas Theatre.
- Jefferson Boulevard.
- Tyler Station.
- Stockyards District in Fort Worth.

Ash+Lime (website).
A Better Brainerd report.
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great The Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

The Bottom-Up Revolution Is...Building and Amplifying Communities Oct 24, 2024

Norm Van Eeden Petersman is the director of membership and development at Strong Towns. He regularly writes for Strong Towns on topics including housing, transportation and community building. He also co-leads his area’s Local Conversation, Deltans for People-Oriented Places.

In this episode, Petersman joins host Tiffany Owens Reed to discuss his work with Strong Towns and the importance of building community in your place. They also share an exciting update about the future of The Bottom-Up Revolution.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Local Recommendations:
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).

Do you know someone who would make for a great The Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

The Bottom-Up Revolution Is...Advocating for Safer Streets Oct 17, 2024

Yamini Karandikar is the leader of Strong Towns San Antonio, a Local Conversation in Texas that advocates for safer streets and alternative transportation. Among other efforts, she successfully nominated an intersection in her city for review in the Strong Towns Crash Analysis Studio and is co-hosting a Local-Motive session on improving street safety. Professionally, she works in process improvement strategy within the electric and gas industry.

In this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, Karandikar talks with host Tiffany Owens Reed about her advocacy journey, what it’s like to conduct a Crash Analysis Studio, and how her community is changing for the better.

If you want more information about Karandikar’s experience with the Crash Analysis Studio and how it’s transforming her community, join her Local-Motive session on October 24 at noon CDT: “From Crash to Community Empowerment: How Addressing a Car Crash Helped Save and Change Lives.”

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Local recommendations:
- The Friendly Spot.
- The Station Café.
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great The Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…Putting Down Roots To Build a Stronger Future Oct 10, 2024

Jacob Hyman is a civil-site engineer in training and the leader of Strong Towns Steubenville, a Local Conversation in Ohio. Originally from Florida, he moved to Steubenville after serving in the Air Force and started the city's Local Conversation two years later. He works for Crabtree Group, Inc., which provides site engineering services for traditional neighborhood developments and infill development across the country and globe.

Today, Hyman joins host Tiffany Owens Reed on The Bottom-Up Revolution to discuss the challenges of revitalizing a Rust Belt city, how Strong Towns Steubenville is tackling those challenges, and how a combination of creativity, community and faith could be exactly what Steubenville — and cities like it — need to thrive.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Local recommendations:
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great The Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…Becoming a Local Real Estate Developer Sep 26, 2024

Tiffany Elder is a licensed general contractor, realtor and real estate investor/developer in Durham, North Carolina. She is the owner of Paradigm Construction (a design-build construction firm) and Paradigm Properties (a real estate brokerage firm). She also facilitates real estate ownership and investing seminars for residents.

Elder joins this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution to discuss her career path, how her various roles intersect, and the challenges and opportunities she’s faced in Durham.

To hear more from Elder, check out her Local-Motive session “Investing in Housing Development that Strengthens Neighborhoods Without Pushing People Out.” You can join live today at noon CDT or access the recording at any time in the Strong Towns Academy.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Local recommendations:
- Bar Virgil - Downtown.
- Nzinga’s café.
- Walk downtown.
- Duke Gardens.
- Tiffany Elder’s TEDx Talk.
Tiffany Elder (website).
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great The Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…Helping Incremental Developers Make Better Places Part 2 Sep 19, 2024

Jennifer Krouse is a real estate strategist and the CEO of Liberty House Plans, an architectural publishing house that provides architectural plans for neighborhood-friendly buildings. Previously, she served as a business advisor to real estate developers and a consultant in the field of municipal productivity. She is a member of the National Town Builders Association and holds a BA from Williams College and an MBA from the Stockholm School of Economics.
Krouse returns in this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution to dive deeper into what it means for an area to be productive. She and host Tiffany Owens Reed also discuss the importance of social capital and smart municipal investment strategies.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Local recommendations:
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…a City Council Supporting Parking Reform Sep 05, 2024

Paloma Delgadillo is a council member in the city of Broomfield, Colorado. Originally from Texas, Paloma holds a B.A. in economics and a minor in statistics from the University of Chicago undergraduate program. She also earned a master’s degree in analytics from the University of Chicago Graham School.

In this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, Delgadillo joins host Tiffany Owens Reed to discuss her efforts to make her city more resilient, including through parking reform.

To hear more from Delgadillo, sign up for next week’s Local-Motive session: “The Parking Revolution is Here. Is Your Community Ready To Sign On?”

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Local recommendations:
- Arista Deli.
- Proto's Pizzeria Napoletana.
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great The Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…Making a Difference With Local Government Aug 29, 2024

Alec Davis is a native of Des Moines, Iowa, with a background in engineering and consulting. In 2018 he left the corporate world to venture out as an entrepreneur, starting a restaurant alongside his brother back home in Des Moines. In 2023, after learning more about zoning and advocacy, he started Momentum Des Moines, an urban advocacy organization.

On this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, Davis joins host Tiffany Owens Reed to talk about Momentum Des Moines’ efforts to build a better city by working with local government to end car dependency and make the city more accessible for everyone.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Local recommendations:
- Dough Co. Pizza.
- Des Moines Biergarten.
- Lua Brewing.
- Big Grove Brewing.
- Bartenders Handshake.
- Lucky Lotus.
- Lachelle's.
- Cheese Bar.
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!
Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean or via RSS.

The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…Helping Incremental Developers Make Better Places Aug 22, 2024

Jennifer Krouse is a real estate strategist and the CEO of Liberty House Plans, an architectural publishing house that provides architectural plans for neighborhood-friendly buildings. Previously, she served as a business advisor to real estate developers and a consultant in the field of municipal productivity. She is a member of the National Town Builders Association and holds a BA from Williams College and an MBA from the Stockholm School of Economics.
On this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, Krouse joins host Tiffany Owens Reed to talk about the ways Liberty House Plans makes incremental development easier and less risky. They also discuss the art of placecraft — also known as placemaking — and the importance of places being productive.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Liberty House Plans (site).
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…Fighting the Housing Crisis as an Incremental Developer Part 2 Aug 15, 2024

Seth Zeren is a a neighborhood developer and founding member of Strong Towns, as well as a self-proclaimed recovering city planner and a writer at the Build the Next Right Thing Substack. A San Francisco native, Zeren now lives with his family in Providence, Rhode Island, where he works as an incremental developer.

Zeren returns in this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution to talk with host Tiffany Owens Reed about the political side of incremental development and how to deal with issues like balancing needed development with the increased property taxes that development usually brings.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Build the Next Right Thing (Substack).
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great The Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…Advocating for Better Transit and Safe Streets Aug 08, 2024

Erik Lowe is the founder of Reimagine Spokane, a grassroots group of citizens who are calling for safer streets and better transit in Spokane, Washington. He's also the designer of the “Spokane Reimagined” plan, a $1 billion proposal to improve safety and connectivity in Spokane over 20 years. On this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, he joins host Tiffany Owens Reed to talk about transit advocacy and the importance of walkability and safe streets.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Local recommendations:
1. Riverfront park, food truck, falls, gondola.
2. Atticus Coffee.
3. Domini’s Sandwiches.
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great The Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…Fighting the Housing Crisis as an Incremental Developer Part 1 Jul 25, 2024

Seth Zeren is a a neighborhood developer and founding member of Strong Towns, as well as a self-proclaimed recovering city planner and a writer at the Build the Next Right Thing Substack. A San Francisco native, Zeren now lives with his family in Providence, Rhode Island, where he works as an incremental developer.

On this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, Zeren joins host Tiffany Owens Reed to talk about his path to becoming an incremental developer with a midsize real estate firm, the stark divide between most modern developers and non-developers, and his approach to both incremental finance and philosophy.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Build the Next Right Thing (Substack).
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great The Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…Becoming a Member of Local Government Jul 18, 2024

Erin Joyce is the mayor of Braintree, Massachusetts. She’s also a professional civil engineer, former chair of her local planning board, former PTO president, youth soccer coach, and mom to three boys.

She’s joining host Tiffany Owens Reed today on The Bottom-Up Revolution to discuss what it’s like to build strong towns as an elected official, the challenges and opportunities she’s faced, and the importance of community engagement in local government.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Erin Joyce (site).
Local recommendations:
- Widowmaker Brewery in the Blue Hills.
- Foley's Ice Cream Shop.
- Thayer Birth Place, Historical Society.
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…City Building With Small-Scale Manufacturers Jul 11, 2024

Ilana Preuss is the founder and CEO of Recast City, a program that helps cities build strong downtowns by empowering small-scale manufacturers. She is also the author of “Recast Your City: How to Save Your Downtown with Small-Scale Manufacturing.” Previously, she was the vice president and chief of staff at Smart Growth America and led the technical assistance program at the EPA Smart Growth Program. She is a TEDx speaker on, “The Economic Power of Great Places,” and a featured keynote speaker.

In this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, Preuss joins host Tiffany Owens Reed to discuss the importance of small-scale manufacturing and her experiences as a city builder.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Local recommendations:
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…Fighting for Better Public Transit in the Big Apple Jun 27, 2024

Danny Pearlstein is the policy and communications director at Riders Alliance, a nonprofit transit advocacy organization in New York City. With degrees in environmental studies and urban planning from Cornell, a degree in law from Cardozo and a history on the New York City Council, Pearlstein works to ensure every New Yorker has access to frequent, reliable, accessible and affordable public transit. Today, he joins host Tiffany Owens Reed to discuss congestion pricing, car dependency and public transit in the Big Apple.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Rider’s Alliance (site).
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…Helping Local Advocates Improve Their Cities Jun 13, 2024

In this special episode for Member Week, Tiffany interviews Strong Towns Community Builder John Pattison. Pattison works with advocates in hundreds of communities as they start and lead local Strong Towns groups called Local Conversations. In the interview, they explore how these groups embody the bottom-up nature of the Strong Towns movement, some of the ways Local Conversations have successfully improved their cities, and how becoming a member supports the Local Conversations program.

In addition to his work with Strong Towns, Pattison is the author of two books, most recently “Slow Church” (InterVarsity Press), which takes inspiration from Slow Food and the other Slow movements to help faith communities reimagine how they live life together in the neighborhood. He and his family live in Silverton, Oregon.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Become a member today!
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…Unexpected Allies Fighting a Highway Expansion Project May 23, 2024

In this special edition of The Bottom-Up Revolution, recorded last week at the 2024 National Gathering, we have a double interview with Susan Graham and Ally Smither. Graham and Smither are part of a movement in Houston, Texas, called Stop TxDOT I-45, which is working to prevent a massive highway expansion.

Susan is a retired nurse who has lived in Houston for decades and who started the movement after hearing about the Texas Department of Transportation’s plans for her neighborhood. Ally is originally from London, Ontario, in Canada. A professional opera singer, she stumbled upon the world of transportation advocacy during COVID-19, as well as finding a new professional path in communications, community advocacy and (most recently) as chief of staff for Texas Senator-Elect Molly Cook.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Stop TxDOT I-45 (site).
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Brian Boland: Reclaiming Land From Urban Highways May 09, 2024

Brian Boland is a native of Cincinnati and the founder of Bridge Forward Cincinnati, an advocacy group working to reclaim 19 acres of city land from urban highways. He has a master’s degree in Urban Sustainability and Resilience and 30 years of experience in neighborhood revitalization. In addition to his work with Bridge Forward Cincinnati, Boland is one of the founders of CNU Midwest and a member of Strong Towns. He helped organize this year’s Congress for the New Urbanism, which will be held May 15-18 in Cincinnati, directly after the Strong Towns National Gathering.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Bridge Forward Cincinnati (site).
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Christian Gray: Alleviating Neighborhood Poverty at a Root Level Apr 25, 2024

Christian Gray is a native of Southern California, but now resides in Omaha, Nebraska, with his family, where he is the co-executive director of inCOMMON Community Development, an organization that aims to alleviate poverty at a root level by uniting and strengthening vulnerable neighborhoods. Gray has worked in the field of national and international community development for 16 years, and we’re excited to have him on The Bottom-Up Revolution this week to talk about his community and the work he’s doing in it!

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

inCOMMON Community Development (website).
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Sara Joy Proppe: Helping Churches Use Placemaking To Connect With the Community Apr 11, 2024

Sara Joy Proppe is a native of Texas, but lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. She has a degree in urban planning, and has over a decade of professional experience and managing private real estate development projects, as well as leading community placemaking workshops throughout the Midwest. She's the founder and director of Proximity Project, a consultancy that helps churches discover how they can use placemaking to connect with the local community.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Proximity Project (website).
Check out Grand Rounds Scenic Byway, Summit Avenue, Cathedral Hill, and West 7th St.
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Armando Moritz-Chapelliquen: A Grassroots Community Advocate Mar 28, 2024

Armando Moritz-Chapelliquen is a passionate community organizer in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley. With extensive experience in providing reports and educational materials on community and economic development, he has collaborated with organizations such as the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, the U.S. Economic Development Administration, and the Local Initiative Support Corporation, where he currently serves. Beyond his professional commitments, Armando is a dedicated father and volunteers actively within his local school district. In this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, we delve into Moritz-Chapelliquen’s role as a grassroots community advocate.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Armando Moritz-Chapelliquen (LinkedIn; Twitter/X.)
Check out Easton Public Market and Plants and Coffee.
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Maddy Novich: Not Your Typical Bike Activist! Mar 14, 2024

Maddy Novich is a criminal justice professor at Manhattan College, a mom of three, and an Instagram influencer living in New York City—you might know her as @cargobikemomma. Novich fell in love with cargo biking during a trip with her family to Europe in 2019, and launched an Instagram account when she came back to just share her love of biking around the city and to help other people, especially other women, realize that this mobility option is available to them.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Maddy Novich (Instagram).
Check out Vinetaria, Lalibela, and Double Dutch Espresso.
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Deatra Kemp: Helping First-Time Homebuyers Realize Their Dreams Feb 29, 2024

Deatra Kemp is a native of Milwaukee with a long background in the real estate industry. She is passionate about helping close the home ownership gap within her city's Black and Hispanic communities. As the Vice President of Programs at Acts Housing, she oversees the homebuyer coaching, lending, and home rehab programs that help first-time homebuyers realize their dream of owning a home.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Acts Housing (website).
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Adam Greenfield and Miriam Schoenfield: Fighting Freeway Widening in Austin Feb 08, 2024

On this week’s episode, we’ve got a special double interview with Adam Greenfield and Miriam Schoenfield, who are both freeway fighters based in Austin, Texas. Greenfield is a transportation and land-use advocate and co-founder of Rethink35. Schoenfield, who is a board member at Rethink35, is a professor at The University of Texas at Austin. Challenging the expansion of a massive highway is one of the biggest missions one can take on in any city, so we’re excited to have Greenfield and Schoenfield on the show to talk about this important work that they’re doing.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Rethink35 (website).
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Jessica Peacock: Fighting for a Family-Owned Grocery Store Jan 25, 2024

Jessica Peacock is a native of Raleigh, North Carolina, and for the past four years, she’s been fighting to reopen her great-grandparents’ neighborhood grocery store in the Walnut Terrace neighborhood. The endeavor has required her to go through an extensive rezoning process, and on this week’s episode, she’s going to share what that journey has been like for her.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Peacox Market (website).
“Raleigh Woman Battles City Hall to Reopen Her Great-Grandparents' Neighborhood Store,” by Asia Mieleszko, Strong Towns (May 2023).
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Jon Jon Wesolowski: Chattanooga Urbanist Society Jan 11, 2024

Today’s Bottom-Up Revolution guest is Jon Jon Wesolowski, who is an old friend of host Tiffany Owens Reed. Wesolowski lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with his wife and two kids and works full time in social media. Outside of work, he makes content for various social media platforms—mostly TikTok and Instagram—related to urbanist issues. He was a founding member of the Chattanooga Urbanist Society, a bottom-up group of residents who are making their city better through tactical action, and is also a member of the Chattanooga Local Conversation group.

Jennifer Gaughran: Running the Strong Towns Toastmasters Group Dec 14, 2023

On this episode, host Tiffany Owens Reed chats with Jennifer Gaughran. Gaughran is a resident of San Diego, California, and outside of her full-time job in marketing, she runs the Strong Towns Toastmasters group, where folks interested in cities and public speaking gather every week online to refine their speaking skills, while talking about various urban issues and Strong Towns concepts.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Learn more about Strong Towns Toastmasters.
Check out Gaughran’s adventure story podcast for children, The Adventures of Red Knight.
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Check out the Gaslamp Quarter, Balboa Park, and Old Town.
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Dustin LaFont: The Largest Community Bike Shop in Louisiana Nov 30, 2023

On this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, host Tiffany Owens Reed chats with Dustin LaFont. LaFont is the proud executive director of Front Yard Bikes, a youth workforce development program providing safe spaces for youth in Baton Rogue, Louisiana, to learn bike mechanics, welding, urban gardening, cooking, riding safety, and providing after-school jobs.

LaFont first began repairing bikes with a few kids on his front yard in the summer of 2010, but as demand grew, the community rallied behind the project. Through the years, Front Yard Bikes has included over 2,000 youth and more than 10,000 bikes. With two after-school sites and a full-service bike shop in Mid City, Front Yard Bikes has become the largest community bike shop in the state and hopes to do even more with the amazing youth that champion the good work.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Front Yard Bikes (website).
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Check out Highland Coffees, City Roots, Chow Yum, and French Truck Coffee.
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Alisha Loch: Keeping Norwood, OH, Vibrant for Future Generations Nov 16, 2023

Alisha Loch is a Strong Towns member, a mother of three, and a founding board member of Norwood Together, a community development corporation in Norwood, Ohio—which was a finalist in the 2022 Strongest Town Competition. A lover of cities, Loch enjoys community events, parks, porches, and anything that increases the small-town feel of Norwood. She is passionate about working alongside other residents to keep her neighborhood vibrant for future generations.

Strong Towns members like Alisha Loch are making a difference in their communities. Will you join them by becoming a member today?

Scott Jones: Building Neighborhood Connections With Acts of Hospitality Nov 09, 2023

On this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, host Tiffany Owens Reed talks with Scott Jones. Jones is a lifelong resident of Long Beach, California, where he is the co-founder and executive director of We Love Long Beach, a nonprofit that encourages and equips residents to build connections with their neighbors through acts of generosity and hospitality.

Their work shows how simple gestures of hospitality can be on-ramps to deeper connections with our neighbors, which can translate into friendships, meaningful political collaboration on the local level, and effective defense against loneliness.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

We Love Long Beach (website / Instagram / Facebook / X).
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Check out Domenico’s Restaurant, Nick’s on 2nd, and Alamitos Bay.
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Aimee and Cody Frederick: Café Owners and Conversation Leaders Oct 26, 2023

Aimee and Cody Frederick are the owners of Blockhouse Coffee, a specialty coffee house in a historic part of downtown Richmond, Texas, a small town in the Houston metro area.

Even though they aren’t from Richmond or even from Texas, their café is just one way they are demonstrating radical commitment to their city. They also lead a Strong Towns Local Conversation group called Fortify Richmond and cultivate real estate. Aimee co-hosts a podcast called Born in the Bend and, starting in 2020, she began serving on the city’s zoning and planning commission…all of that in addition to raising two kids!

Ultimately for the Fredericks, their efforts boil down to their love of hospitality and building community, and they’ve got a lot to share in this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution!

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Block House Coffee & Kitchen (website / Instagram).
Born in the Bend podcast.
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Check out the Fort Bend Museum, Harlem Road Texas BBQ, Trough Juice, Mercy Goods, and Shady Oak Primary School.
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Shelby Wild: Breaking Down Barriers to Local Food Oct 12, 2023

Shelby Wild is a mom, a lifelong gardener, and executive director of Route One Farmers Market in her hometown of Lompoc, California, which she started in 2018 after her neighborhood farmer’s market closed.

As both a traditional farmer’s market and a nonprofit, Wild’s goal for Route One Farmers Market is to increase access and break down barriers to local food in California’s Lompoc Valley. The market runs every Sunday and is currently the sole market for 50 miles of the central coast of California that offers customers both EBT and Market Match.

Wild and her team strive to make the market a place that brings together the diverse communities that call Lompoc home. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wild led her market to be the first in the area to offer a produce bag for curbside contactless pickup for all customers, distributing hundreds of bags of local food for those under shelter-in-place restrictions. Last year, they launched the first ever mobile farmer’s market in Santa Barbara County, and just recently, Wild was honored as Woman of the Year by her local Chamber of Commerce at their annual awards banquet.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Route One Farmers Market (website).
Shelby Wild (LinkedIn).
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Check out Cold Coast Brewing Co., Dare 2 Dream Farms Homestead, and South Side Coffee Co.
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Marques King: Doing Incremental Development in Detroit Sep 28, 2023

On this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, host Tiffany Owens Reed is joined by Marques King, a licensed architect, practicing urban designer, and small-scale developer operating out of Detroit, Michigan.

Originally from Detroit, King returned home after spending a decade in Washington, DC, and now runs a design firm that specializes in incremental development projects. His work is driven by a desire to see a more sustainable future for his city by providing human-scale neighborhoods that are accessible to a wider variety of people across the social-economic spectrum.

King also serves as a faculty member of the Incremental Development Alliance and is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Maryland’s School of Architecture, Preservation & Planning.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Marques King (Twitter/X).
Fabrick (website).
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Check out the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), Islandview Villages, The Red Hook, Marrow, Yum Village, and the Detroit Riverfront.
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Gary Oddi: A Lifelong Educator Advocating for Active Transportation Sep 14, 2023

On today’s episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, host Tiffany Owens Reed is joined by Gary Oddi, a longtime resident of Temecula, California, who served in public education as a teacher and administrator before retiring in 2016. A lifelong biker, he founded Bike Temecula Valley in 2020, a nonprofit that advocates for more active transit in his city.

Along with his duties as president of Bike Temecula Valley, Oddi is also a substitute administrator for the Temecula Valley Unified School District and the director of the Murrieta Creek Regional Trail Four Cities Planning Team. He also sits on the city of Temecula Services Commission and continues to lead drives and educate the community about active transportation.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Gary Oddi (Twitter/X).
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Bike Temecula Valley (website).
Check out Le Coffee, La Bottega, and Temecula Valley Wineries.
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Barry Greene: A Dad Advocating for Density and Localism Aug 31, 2023

This week on The Bottom-Up Revolution, host Tiffany Owens Reed talks with Barry Greene Jr., an urban journalist and local advocate from the Southside neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia. After spending time in Brooklyn and Charlotte, Greene returned to Richmond earlier this year and launched his Substack, Density Dad.

On Greene’s blog, he draws on his experience as a husband and father to write about city and urban design issues in an accessible manner, and also advocates for urban design that’s friendly to families, children, and seniors. In addition to working full-time as a fundraising and grants manager for an environmental nonprofit, he also serves on the board of Virginia Rapid Transit and the Partnership for Smarter Growth.

Today, Greene talks with us about his work with advocacy and his success as a small business owner.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Barry Greene Jr. (Twitter).
Density Dad (Website).
Check out Urban Hang Suite, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, T. Tyler Potterfield Memorial Bridge, and Shades of Moss (Greene’s own local business!).
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

Noah Tang: Working Alongside Local Government Aug 17, 2023

Noah Tang, high school history teacher in Bloomington, Illinois, discovered the power of small steps when he invited a few friends over to discuss the city's housing issues. From that initial gathering, a Local Conversation movement was sparked that led to the city unanimously changing its zoning code. This change allows residents more flexibility to adapt to housing needs and build additional housing units (ADUs) on their property.

In this episode of the Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, host Tiffany Owens Reed catches up with Tang. They talk about why he chose to get involved in local government, his recent trip to the Netherlands, and how things are progressing in Bloomington. This episode follows Strong Towns' coverage of the Local Conversation Bloomington Revivalists' journey for change earlier this year.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Noah Tang (Twitter).
“History Teacher Steps Up and Starts the Conversation for Change in Bloomington, Illinois,” by Seairra Sheppard, Strong Towns (February 2023).
Learn more about starting your own Local Conversation.
Check out Bloomington's Farmers Market, McLean County’s History Museum, Epiphany Farms Restaurant, and Coffee Hound Cafe.
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!

LeVette Fuller: Actively Making a Strong Town Aug 03, 2023

Who are the people working to make their places stronger?

On this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, host Tiffany Owens Reed interviews LeVette Fuller. Fuller was born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana, and has served for four years on the city council, ran for mayor, and is now working in real estate. She’s taken part in many projects pointed toward creating a stronger, more adaptable city, including Reform Shreveport, which hosts a Fiscal Impact Analysis conducted by Urban3 on their site, as well as a portal for citizens to inform the city of local needs.

Tune in to this episode and hear Fuller talk about Shreveport, its unique history, and how she’s bringing new ideas to the city.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

LeVette Fuller (Twitter).
Reform Shreveport (Website).
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram).
Check out Vinyl Coffee, Herby K’s, Southern Maid Donuts, the R.W. Norton Art Gallery Botanical Gardens, and Sweetport Ice Cream!
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Introducing Your New Host for The Bottom-Up Revolution! Jul 27, 2023

After taking a hiatus for her maternity leave, Rachel Quednau is back with a new episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution, where she's introducing Tiffany Owens Reed, who will soon be our new host for the podcast.

Those of you who have been around here for a while may recognize Tiffany as one of our regular writers and a previous guest on this very podcast, as well as a featured speaker in many of our workshops and events—including, most recently, the National Gathering. She's also a member of our advisory board, and, in general, has been involved with Strong Towns for many years.

We're so excited to welcome Tiffany to The Bottom-Up Revolution. We invite you to get to know her in this episode and look forward to hearing more from her in the coming weeks!

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Read Strong Towns articles by Tiffany.
Check out Tiffany’s previous appearance on The Bottom-Up Revolution.
Read more of Tiffany’s writing at Cities Decoded.
“Patterns, Placemaking, and People: 3 Questions for Observing Your City,” by Tiffany Owens Reed, Strong Towns (June 2023).
Learn the 4-Step Process for Public Investment from Tiffany over at the Strong Towns Academy.
Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? Let us know here!
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Top of the Bottom-Up: Creating a Coffee Shop for the Whole Neighborhood Jan 26, 2023

While Rachel is on maternity leave, we’re re-running some of our best and most popular episodes of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast.

This episode, which we published in May of 2021, came to us because Strong Towns Community Builder John Pattison is friends with the guest, Coté Soerens and her husband, Tim. In the podcast you’re about to hear, the focus is on a wonderful neighborhood coffee shop that Soerens opened to be a gathering place in her community of South Park in Seattle. But we’ve been thinking about this episode recently because John also let us know that Coté and Tim have been leading an effort called Reconnect South Park to tear down a harmful highway that cuts through the neighborhood.

Soeren’s coffee shop, Resistencia, has served as a convening space for advocates working on this issue, a perfect example of how a neighborhood café can create so much benefit for a city—not just in providing jobs, providing local goods, activating a storefront—but also in being a “third space” where people can get together and work on making their city stronger. If you want to learn more about how to get involved in stopping wasteful highways in your city, check out our End Highway Expansion campaign.

Additional Show Notes

Resistencia website.
Reconnect South Park website.
Visit the End Highway Expansion campaign page.
Strong Towns articles on gentrification.
Urban Fresh Food Collective.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Top of the Bottom-Up: Taking Matters Into Our Own Hands to #SlowTheCars Jan 05, 2023

While Rachel is on maternity leave, we’re re-running some of our best and most popular episodes of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast.

This episode from August of 2021 is a fascinating story about a Strong Towns member who literally bought a road in order to try and make it safer. Mary Moriarty Jones lives in Honolulu, where plenty of roads are privately owned, which is what made this story possible. You’ll hear a lot more about that process and why Jones is so passionate about making this street safer for her children to walk to school. But since we recorded, we also have an update to share: Jones emailed a couple months ago to say that she successfully transferred ownership of the road back to the city and county, who now plan to add sidewalks and crossings to hopefully make the street safer for everyone who uses it.

This is ultimately the story of someone who was so dedicated to the Strong Towns mission and so believed in the cause of safer streets that she did everything she possibly could to make it happen. We hope that those who come after her do not have to fight quite so hard just to ensure they can safely walk to work or school without risking their lives. But we’re thankful and inspired by advocates like Mary Jones. Check out our Safe and Productive Streets campaign if you want to connect more with these efforts.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

A couple of articles about Mary Jones’s quest for safer streets, from Civil Beat: “This Diamond Head Mom Found An Unusual Way To Fight City Hall“ and “Diamond Head Mom Who Took Over Road Riles Neighbors By Charging For Parking.”
Safe and Productive Streets campaign page.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Top of the Bottom-Up: Building Family and Community Resilience Dec 15, 2022

While Rachel is on maternity leave, we’re re-running some of our best and most popular episodes of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast.

The episode we’re re-running this week is one of Rachel’s all-time favorites. It features our amazing colleague Lauren Fisher, although that’s not why it’s a favorite. Rather, it’s because of the candid way Lauren speaks about her life and the choices she has made to build household resilience: raising animals, growing food, mending and crafting things herself rather than buying new, and, perhaps most important of all, developing deep connections with neighbors and family for the good times and the bad.

Since we recorded this conversation in the summer of 2021, Lauren and her husband have moved to a new home in the same area which offered them greater opportunities for their little homestead. Her parents also moved in with them into the basement unit of the house and plan to eventually build an accessory dwelling unit for them to live in long term. In addition to the chickens and rabbits she was already raising, they’ve added sheep. Lauren’s also been selling and exchanging things like flowers and eggs with people in her town, and plans to do more of that in the coming months. All of these things are not only a way to provide for the family, but also a way to meet her neighbors. You’ll hear more about why that’s so important and the role of community in building resilience throughout this conversation.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

“#DotheMath on Chicken Regulations,” by Lauren Fisher, Strong Towns (August 2020).
“5 Places to Meet New People to Join the Strong Towns Conversation,” by Lauren Fisher, Strong Towns (April 2021).
Sign up for Strong Towns email.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Top of the Bottom-Up: Building Gentle Density and a Grassroots Campaign for City Council Dec 01, 2022

While Rachel is on maternity leave, we’re re-running some of our best and most popular episodes of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast.

We were reminded about this episode after recently recording a new interview with Sarah Cipkar, a small-scale developer based in Windsor, Ontario, whose interest in accessory dwelling units prompted her to build her own ADU.

Today’s re-run conversation with Ashley Salvador was recorded in the fall of 2021. Salvador is a big advocate for accessory dwelling units and, like Cipkar, lives in Canada, in the city of Edmonton. (Canadians must be onto something when it comes to expanding housing options and making housing more affordable!) We could sing the praises of accessory dwelling units all day, but the basic gist is that they allow homeowners to build a small additional apartment on their land, meaning rental income for the owner and the chance for a new resident to live in a desirable neighborhood at a much lower cost than the typical home in that area. It’s a win-win situation.

What started for Salvador as a research project turned into people asking her for input on how they could build their own ADUs and navigate the zoning and permitting processes, so she started an organization to help teach people about all of this. And eventually, she was so driven to make her community stronger that she decided to run for city council and won in 2021.

It’s a trajectory we’ve heard about many times on this show: Someone starts exploring an issue they care about, momentum gets built around that issue and other people start joining the cause, and, sometimes, that individual decides to take the next step into leadership and run for local office. You’ll hear about that whole journey in this conversation, which is one of our most popular episodes to date.

Additional Show Notes

YEGarden Suites website.
Check out the related interview with Sarah Cipkar.
“Will Edmonton Be the First Major Canadian City to Eliminate Parking Minimums?” by Ashley Salvador, Strong Towns (May 2020).
“How to Get Rid of Parking Minimums,” a Strong Towns webcast featuring Ashley Salvador.
Follow Ashley Salvador on Twitter.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…Getting Stronger Nov 17, 2022

On this special Member Week episode of the show, Chuck Marohn and Strong Towns Member Advocate Norm Van Eeden Petersman talk about the membership experience at Strong Towns and the new initiatives we hope to launch soon. We hope you enjoy it, and if you want to be in on the Strong Towns member experience, then join us! Become a Strong Towns member today.

Top of the Bottom-Up: Growing Food, Growing Resilience Oct 27, 2022

While Rachel is on maternity leave, we’re re-running some of our best and most popular episodes of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast.

This one, originally recorded in February of 2021, shares the amazing success story of Alfred Melbourne, who came out of prison, got access to a small, trash-filled plot of land, and began tilling it, improving his neighborhood in the process. Eventually he turned that into a non-profit urban farm operation, Three Sisters Gardens, where young people learn skills and the produce is donated in an area without much fresh food access—plus, Melbourne’s now expanded to other plots around the city.

The organic (pun intended) growth of this effort has impacted so many people and shows how a little seed money and guidance can allow an entrepreneur to thrive. Think about that when you see billions of dollars allotted for highway expansion. Imagine what we could do if we took a fraction of that money and used it to jump-start neighborhood improving efforts like Three Sisters Gardens.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Three Sisters Gardens website.
Three Sisters Gardens Instagram page, where you’ll find photos and videos.
Center for Land-Based Learning.
“This Modern Farmer Employs At-Risk Youth to Keep Them Off the Streets,” by Alfred Melbourne, Modern Farmer (January 2021).
Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Sarah Cipkar: Building an Accessory Dwelling Unit and Helping Others Do the Same Sep 29, 2022

You know this narrative by now, right? Maybe it’s even your story: Someone gets fired up about an issue in their community and starts taking steps to address it. Next thing they know, neighbors are coming to them for advice, momentum is building around this issue, and they’re finding a whole community of people who care about that thing, too. This turns into a broader effort to change, not just that initial issue, but also all the Strong Towns issues that are connected to it…

Today’s guest is Sarah Cipkar, and she experienced her own version of this journey. A few years ago, she decided to take the step to build an accessory dwelling unit in her yard in Windsor, Ontario. An accessory dwelling unit (also called an additional dwelling unit, ADU, or granny flat, among other terms) just refers to any small housing that’s added to an existing lot. It could be a small apartment built over your garage or a mini cottage constructed in the backyard of your home.

Cipkar successfully built that ADU, found a great tenant, and the property was soon providing income for her family, plus a new sense of community with her tenant, who helped out with watching the house while Cipkar was on trips, shared meals with her family, and more. (Cipkar will tell you about the myriad benefits of ADUs in this episode. This is just the beginning of the list, really.)

After going through the intensive process of not just building the ADU, but first jumping through the many government hoops, permits, and financing challenges to get the project off the ground in the first place, Cipkar was motivated to help others navigate this process, too. She started a pilot project called ADUSearch, which is an online hub where anyone can look up their address and find out what sorts of additional dwelling units could be built on their property. She began this initiative with properties in Windsor, but is now expanding it, thanks to some grants and partnerships, to encompass the entire country of Canada.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

ADUsearch.ca website.
Visit Sarah Cipkar’s website.
ADUsearch and Sarah Cipkar on Instagram.
Learn more about Accessory Dwelling Units in the Strong Towns Action Lab where you can find core insights, case studies, key articles and more.
Backdoor Revolution: The Definitive Guide to ADU Development by Kol Peterson.
Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Erin Stewart: A Mayor Working for Safe Streets and a Thriving Downtown Sep 22, 2022

Erin Stewart has served as mayor of New Britain, Connecticut, since 2013. She was elected at the age of just 26 and was the youngest mayor in the city’s history. Mayor Stewart is a Republican with a particular passion for building safer streets, revitalizing neglected properties, and helping New Britain’s downtown thrive.

In this conversation, Mayor Stewart talks about her efforts to increase housing downtown, especially given the history of a highway that cut through New Britain during the urban renewal period decades ago. She sees the financial and social value of investing in places that prioritize people walking, biking, and enjoying life—not just people driving through. She also knows how important access to affordable transportation options is for many of her constituents who don’t own cars.

Mayor Stewart is committed to listening to New Britain residents and responding to their concerns, no matter what political party they associate with, and she’s seen serious success improving the financial situation in her town, lifting them out of a deficit hole into a surplus.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Read more about Mayor Stewart.
New Britain’s Plan of Conservation and Development.
New Britain’s Complete Streets Roadmap.
Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Norm Van Eeden Petersman: Speaking Up to Build Strong Towns Sep 15, 2022

Norm Van Eeden Petersman has biked every street in his community in Delta, British Columbia, with his son; helped found a Strong Towns Toastmasters group; and decided to speak up at a city council meeting in favor of allowing more rental housing.

That moment of standing up at a council meeting led him to look around at the others who were also supporting the rental housing initiative and gather those people together into what eventually became Del-POP: Deltans for People-Oriented Places, a Local Conversation group that is discussing and advocating on Strong Towns issues in their city. In particular, this group has focused on speaking up when they support something and sharing that support with elected officials to help bolster positive change. They recognized how often people speak up in opposition to things they don’t like and decided to counteract those negative voices with advocacy for things—housing, bike lanes, small businesses, etc.—instead of just against things.

Norm joined the Strong Towns team in late July as our brand-new Member Advocate. Prior to this, Norm was a pastor and in this conversation, he’ll discuss the connection he sees between his religious ministry and his Strong Towns leadership, plus share about Del-POP and the other efforts he’s made in his community to build a stronger town.

We know you’ll be inspired by Norm’s enthusiasm and vision!

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Del-POP website.
Join the Strong Towns Toastmasters group.
Learn more about Strong Towns Local Conversation groups and how to start your own.
Bottom-Up Revolution episode featuring Cary Westerbeck (founder of Bo-POP).
Contact Norm: norm@strongtowns.org.
Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Emma Durand-Wood: Planting Street Trees and Neighborhood Connections Sep 08, 2022

A couple of years ago, we surveyed Strong Towns’ supporting members and one of the questions we asked was how they would characterize their profession and engagement with the movement. Were they involved in Strong Towns as an elected official, city staff person, urban planner, or engineer—or actually just a concerned citizen who cares deeply about their city?

While we had many responses in all of those professional categories, the biggest one was the last one: regular people who care about their communities. Today’s guest is one of those folks, although it’s not right to say she is “just” a concerned citizen—nor is that true of most people involved in this movement.

Emma Durand-Wood is a writer, editor, and former librarian. She’s also a leader in her neighborhood association and a big advocate for street trees. Durand-Wood lives in Winnipeg in Canada, which she calls “a big little city.” She started getting involved in local issues after a pawn shop was being proposed in her neighborhood and she and some neighbors got together to say that business wasn’t a great fit for their community. Since then, she started a blog about her city and neighborhood, made the choice to walk and bike and take transit with her family instead of driving everywhere, helped revive her neighborhood association, and led an initiative to plant more street trees.

In this interview, Durand-Wood talks especially about that last item and the surprising power of trees to transform your city. She also discusses the value of neighborhood gatherings, big and small, including the “front yard pancake party” she and her husband host.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Follow Emma Durand-Wood on Twitter.
Read her blog, Winnipeg O’ My Heart.
Read “Henderson Highway Blues,” a Strong Towns article by Emma Durand-Wood.
Learn more about the Glen Elm Boulevard Tree Project.
Visit the Trees Please Winnipeg website.
Check out the Glen Elm Neighborhood Association website.
Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Spencer Gardner: Moving from Planning to Action Sep 01, 2022

Spencer Gardner is an urban planner and Strong Towns member who moved to Spokane, Washington, a few years back because it offered him and his family an affordable place to live, where they found a traditional neighborhood they could walk and bike in.

Since that move, however, the city—like so many across the U.S.—has become increasingly unaffordable and Spencer has stepped up to help try and change that. An opening in city leadership led him to apply to be Spokane’s planning director and he was hired to the position earlier this year. He’s been part of several important reforms in the city including, significantly, some substantial modifications to their accessory dwelling unit code, which is allowing a lot more of these small homes to be built at a time when greater housing options at low price points are desperately needed.

Spokane also undertook a unique “interim zoning ordinance” to allow up to four units to be built on any lot—a change that happened in record time compared with the years (or even decades) these sorts of reforms usually take to occur in the typical city. Spencer goes into detail about how and why that could occur, and the way he sees it as a special pilot program they can learn from that may pave the way to more permanent change.

In this conversation, Spencer also shares prescient insights on urban planning and how those in this profession need to find ways to move past talking. It can be more comfortable to continue to plan, as a planner, he says. We need to turn that planning into action.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Strong Towns articles by Spencer Gardner.
More information about the Strong Towns lawsuit with the Minnesota Engineering Licensing Board and how you can support our efforts to reform the engineering profession: strongtowns.org/supportreform.
Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Lindsey Meek: An Engineer who ”Saw the Light” Aug 25, 2022

Today’s guest on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast has been a supporting member of Strong Towns for 10 years! Lindsey Meek’s story will be familiar to some of you, especially those in the city-building professions.

Years back, she was an engineer doing some of the typical projects that many civil engineers end up doing these days: building suburban subdivisions. Somewhere along the way, she encountered Strong Towns and especially the now famous video, “Conversation with an Engineer.” As she describes it, she “saw the light” and was convinced that engineering didn’t have to be about paving endless roads to the middle of nowhere and building expensive suburban developments on the edge of town. It could be about making places more prosperous and people-centered, not less.

Today, she works for a healthcare company, helping them develop facilities designed for healing and comfort. She’s also led some efforts to get these large campuses to think about how to be a good neighbor to the surrounding community and helped implement street and public space designs to facilitate that. In this conversation, Lindsey talks about her work today as well as her previous leadership and Strong Towns organizing in Rochester, Minnesota.

This conversation might be especially interesting to the engineers out there wondering how they can make a positive difference with their careers and not keep maintaining the suburban status quo. But it will also appeal to anyone who’s hoping to build stronger towns where they live.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

“Conversation with an Engineer” video.
Lindsey Meek (Twitter).
Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Amy Stelly: Campaigning to Get Rid of an Urban Highway Aug 18, 2022

Urban highways are ubiquitous in pretty much every city across America. They cut through neighborhoods, make navigation challenging, decrease property values, and bring exhaust and noise into our communities. But they also help people move quickly from one end of the city to the other, which is why they were built in so many cities, especially during the suburban boom of the 20th century, when they helped people travel from jobs in the city to homes in the suburbs.

Today, there’s a movement to stop building and expanding these highways, and Strong Towns is a leading voice in that fight. There’s also a movement to try to undo the harm that they’ve already caused and remove them—or parts of them—altogether.

The Treme neighborhood of New Orleans has been home to one such highway for decades: the Claiborne expressway. Treme is an active, culturally rich community near the heart of the city, but it’s been harmed by the dust, noise, disruption, pollution, crime, and economic disinvestment that resulted from this highway cutting through the neighborhood. Amy Stelly, whose family has been in Treme for decades, is helping lead a fight to remove that highway for good.

She’s an urban planner and artist who knows what the neighborhood was like before this highway and sees how its removal could help local businesses thrive, help more residents invest in their homes, and make Treme a safer, more enjoyable place to live and spend time—not just a place to speed through quickly.

To help fellow residents see that potential and push for that change, she’s led community gatherings, activism, and poster campaigns to show what Treme could be without the highway. On this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, she shares a wealth of candid insights about the need for highway removal and the process to make it happen.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Claiborne Avenue Alliance website.
Amy Stelly on Twitter.
“Cracking the Code on Fighting Highway Expansion Projects,” by Amy Stelly, Strong Towns (May 2022).
Congress for the New Urbanism.
“Treme Planner Says It’s Time to Remove the Claiborne Expressway,” by Rich Collins, Biz New Orleans.
“Highways destroyed Black neighborhoods like mine. Can we undo the damage now?“ by Amy Stelly, Washington Post.
Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Steph and Sean Tuff: Starting an Electric Bike Company Aug 11, 2022

Podcast host and Strong Towns Program Director Rachel Quednau has been eyeing electric bikes for some time now, and, while she hasn’t made the leap to purchase one herself just yet, she loves seeing the growth of this industry and the possibilities it opens up for people to have better, cheaper transportation options beyond cars.

Stephanie and Sean Tuff also started seeing that possibility a few years ago and they turned that into a new electric bike business. A few years back, Steph and Sean and their three young children were spending more time outside and looking for ways to get around town that weren’t as expensive or polluting as a car. They found that biking provided this for them and so much more—the chance to really see the city around them instead of just letting it blur past through a windshield, the chance to enjoy fresh air and exercise and, frankly, to have more fun getting around than the typical car commute.

But with young kids in tow and the difference in their abilities to bike quickly at the same speed—especially in hilly areas—they ended up turning to electric bikes to help make their travels even better and easier than on a regular bike.

Eventually they partnered with friends to start a new e-bike company: Tuff Hill eBikes. Opening their business during the pandemic led them to choose a hybrid model where they don’t have a formal storefront but they give people the chance to meet up and test drive a bike, access maintenance, and more.

For Steph and Sean, this isn’t just about sales—although they’ve been quite successful in their enterprise. “We don’t just see it as selling bikes,” says Sean, “we see it as connecting people to a bigger community.” In this conversation, you’ll hear the Tuffs talk about how biking around their city has helped them understand Strong Towns concepts in a real and up-close way, and how they hope that getting more people on e-bikes will allow those people to share in the Strong Towns approach and mission, too.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

- Tuff Hill eBikes.
- Not Just Bikes (YouTube).
- “Are Electric Bikes a Passing Fad or a Revolutionary Transportation Tool?” by Rachel Quednau, Strong Towns (February 2022).
- “How Dutch Cities Restored the ‘Freedom to Roam’,” by Chris and Melissa Bruntlett, Strong Towns (June 2021).
- Youth En Route website.
- Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.
- Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Danny Schaible: Creating a Street Design Team Jul 28, 2022

Today’s guest hails from Hyattsville, Maryland, a growing inner ring suburb of Washington, DC. Danny Schaible is a city councilperson, a Strong Towns member, and the founder of the Hyattsville Street Design Team. We know you’re going to want to hear more about that last one especially!

Schaible has a degree in landscape architecture and spent years working for the National Park Service. He brings that love of public space and awareness of design issues to his leadership in the Hyattsville City Council. Like so many people you’ve heard from on this show, Schaible got pulled into local politics when an issue in his neighborhood grabbed his attention—in this case a misguided and poorly-thought-out development down the street. As he became involved in learning and advocacy around that project, he eventually decided to step up and run for city council, and won in 2019.

In addition to that, he also got inspired to start a “street design team” in his city after reading about the concept in the Strong Towns book, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer. His team of dozens of residents has discussed the book together, conducted bike tours and walk audits, and looked at crash data on dangerous stroads in Hyattsville, among other things.

We hope this conversation gets you thinking about how you might even organize something similar in your own city.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

“Establishing a Street Design Team” (online course from Strong Towns’ Local-Motive Tour).
Confessions of a Recovering Engineer(book).
Toole Design (planning firm).
Get in touch with Danny Schaible: dschaible@hyattsville.org.
Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Ari Feinsmith: Helping More People Get Out and Bike! Jul 21, 2022

A Strong Towns approach is all about seeing the challenges in your city and taking that next smallest step to start addressing them. Today’s guest on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, Strong Towns member Ari Feinsmith, exemplifies that spirit. When he started biking to college (about a 15-minute ride from his house in Sunnyvale, California), he quickly realized how dangerous and challenging it was just to get from point A to point B without a car.

So, Ari began attending public meetings and introducing himself to local elected officials who might be able to make streets a little safer. He joined the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition, eventually becoming team leader of his local chapter. Since getting fired up about these issues a couple years ago, he’s been involved in many successful campaigns to add bike lanes and bike parking, and to make intersections safer for people on bikes. The natural effect is that this also makes streets safer for everyone—in a vehicle, walking, you name it.

While he was advocating for design and policy changes, Ari was also noticing how many people in his community didn’t have the opportunity to bike because they had old bikes that were broken down, and they didn’t know how to fix them. Thinking about what small step he could take to change that situation, he helped set up a series of bike repair events, in which he coordinated volunteers, got use of a local parking lot, and negotiated discounts with a local bike shop for new parts. In total, he and his fellow volunteers have helped over 300 bikes get fixed.

Ari has also been thinking about transportation issues in his city on a holistic level, and after reading Strong Towns, one thing that really stood out to him was the amount of excessive, wasteful parking in his city—space that could be better used for businesses or homes. So he helped lead a campaign to decrease parking minimum requirements in Sunnyvale.

Additional Show Notes

Bike Sunnyvale website.
Ari’s comprehensive guide to starting a free bike repair event in your town.
Ari was named a Bike Champion of the Year 2022 by Bike to Wherever Days. Read about him and the award here.
“We Require WAY Too Much Parking,” by Seairra Shepherd (article about Ari’s efforts to end parking minimums in Sunnyvale, CA).
Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Montavius Jones: Celebrating Your City and Helping it Grow Better Jul 14, 2022

Montavius Jones is a Strong Towns member who describes himself as “getting radicalized” about urban planning issues on Twitter. (This conversation is actually a good argument for the positive potential of Twitter as a place to meet people, connect and share ideas!) Jones majored in commercial real estate in college, and brings that expertise to his work today at a community development financial institution, as well as a lot of on-the-ground advocacy in Milwaukee. A few years ago, he also had the opportunity to travel around Central and South America, observing the way so many cities to the south have built themselves with people as the priority, not cars. In particular, he talks about his all time favorite city, Mexico City, and why it’s a perfect example of successful, strong urban planning.

Jones sees the connections between the challenges that many communities, especially mid-size cities like Milwaukee, face: population stagnation, educational and health disparities, safety, housing affordability… He sees solutions in a Strong Towns approach to urban planning. In this conversation, you’ll also hear about an initiative he helps lead called Urban Spaceship. We’ll just leave that as a teaser since the name alone should be enough to get you intrigued.

Additional Show Notes

Find Montavius Jones on Twitter.
Check out Jones’ travel blog.
Incremental Development Alliance.
Newaukee.
“Design Speed is a Value Statement,” by Charles Marohn, Strong Towns (July 2021).
“The Strong Towns Approach to Public Investment,” by Charles Marohn, Strong Towns (September 2019).
Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Jen Stromsten and Alex Beck: Welcoming New Americans and Building up a Rural Economy Jun 30, 2022

If you live in a small town, grew up in one, or just have a rural community that’s close to your heart, you’ve probably heard things like, “Young people don’t stay in this community,” or “After the plant closed, we’ve been losing population.”

When people leave and no one comes to replace them in smaller towns, businesses shut down, schools are half-empty, open positions can’t be filled, and even basic services are a struggle to cover with declining property taxes. It’s a downward spiral.

Today’s guests are doing something about that. Jennifer Stromsten is the Director of Programs at the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation in Brattleboro, Vermont, and Alex Beck runs their Welcoming Communities program. These leaders take a holistic approach to addressing problems like population decline through economic investment, workforce training, and, of particular interest for our conversation today, inviting new Americans—refugees—to their community and helping them integrate and find employment when they arrive.

Jen and Alex talk about how this Welcoming Communities initiative has breathed new life into their rural town, giving a sense of hope for the future, filling necessary jobs and rebuilding the economic prospects of the place. Their organization has worked with local businesses to partner them with new immigrants, coordinating transportation, setting up interpreters when needed, and figuring out what training these refugees need to get back on their feet and begin employment in Brattleboro. It's a situation that everyone is benefitting from.

Additional Show Notes

Visit the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation website.
Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Jonathan Curth: Ending Parking Minimums and Seeing the Results Jun 23, 2022

A few weeks ago, we announced a series of five core campaigns we’re going to be focusing on over the next few years at Strong Towns, including ending highway expansion, encouraging transparent local accounting, advocating for safe and productive streets, legalizing incremental housing development, and ending parking minimums. None of these are new issues for us, but we’ll be placing a special focus on them and providing a ton of resources and action steps you all can take in your cities to make these Strong Towns visions a reality.

Today’s guest, Jonathan Curth, is here to talk about that last campaign issue: ending parking minimums. He’s the development services director for the city of Fayetteville, Arkansas—one of the first U.S. cities to eliminate commercial parking minimums. These are laws that mandate the amount of parking spaces a business needs to provide. They’re on the books in many U.S. cities and they reach a point of absurdity—an overreach of government that harms local businesses, small-scale developers, home owners, and renters. Luckily, a growing movement of cities is smashing these outdated laws, and you can see the full list on our map of cities that have ended parking minimums.

Jonathan talks a lot more about why these regulations are a problem and why Fayetteville decided to put an end to them, not only because they were harming business opportunities, but also because they were leaving important historic buildings downtown vacant or at risk of destruction, simply because those places were built before cars or parking minimums were a thing. Jonathan also talks about the slow, but important, results that have come about since minimums were eliminated in Fayetteville, including new restaurants opening, vacant lots getting filled, and city staff having a much quicker process to approve new permits for developments and business start-ups.

At the end of the day, eliminating parking minimum requirements is about getting rid of a law that’s unnecessary. Let the market, business owners, and property owners decide what parking is needed, otherwise you’ll end up with empty lots instead of productive places.

Additional Show Notes

Explore parking resources, case studies, and more in our Action Lab.
View a comprehensive map of cities that have ended parking minimums.
Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Ann Zadeh: Community Design for Stronger Towns Jun 16, 2022

On last week’s episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, we heard from two inspiring Strong Towns members, Nick and Amanda Lanata, and this week we’ve got another member story for you. A brief plug: If you didn’t get a chance to become a supporting member during Member Week last week, there’s still time. Join the movement and join incredible people like Nick, Amanda, and today’s guest, Ann Zadeh.

Zadeh has been a part of the Strong Towns movement as a member for more than six years. During that time, she served as city council member in Fort Worth, Texas, and she’s now the executive director of Community Design Forth Worth, which is “a forum for ideas that empower and strengthen all Fort Worth communities through design.” She’s also an urban planner by training.

In this conversation, we’ll hear about the ways Zadeh has navigated leadership in a politically diverse community by focusing on the economic arguments that everyone can get behind. She also talks about her experience running for city council, as well as a run for mayor. And she discusses the unique process she leads at Community Design Fort Worth, helping educate the public and translate complex planning issues—often in order to seed the ground before a controversial issue like re-zoning or building bike lanes comes up for a vote.

Like so many Strong Towns advocates, Zadeh will inspire you with her dedication to her city and her belief that anyone who’s passionate about their place can step up to make it stronger.

Additional Show Notes

Community Design Fort Worth website.
“Learn the 4-Step Process for Public Investment,” an on-demand Strong Towns Local-Motive workshop featuring Tiffany Owens.
Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Nick and Amanda Lanata: Two Amazing Strong Towns Members Jun 09, 2022

Welcome to a special Member Week episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, featuring two amazing Strong Towns members: Nick and Amanda Lanata, from Zachary, Louisiana. Nick is a data scientist and Amanda works for the Louisiana Main Street program, and also helps run a small family business. It probably won’t come as a surprise to hear that when this duo encountered Strong Towns, they were hooked and soon got involved.

Nick was drawn to Strong Towns’ focus on doing the math and assessing the value per acre of developments in our cities. He’s even done analyses on his own community and shared those with elected leaders. Amanda was interested in the Strong Towns approach to helping downtowns and small businesses get activated again and grow economically resilient.

The Lanatas took the Strong Towns mission and really ran with it over the last couple years: meeting and getting to know their city councilors, helping their neighbors see the potential in their city, starting a Local Conversation group, and allowing the Strong Towns approach to guide their personal choices—like how they get around town.

We’re excited for you to hear from these inspiring Strong Towns members and hope that you’ll take a step and join them by becoming a member yourself.

Additional Show Notes

Learn more about value per acre analyses.
Not Just Bikes on YouTube
Visit the Urban3 website
Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Beth Silverman: Uniting For-Profits and Nonprofits to End Homelessness May 26, 2022

We’ve all heard the phrase “housing crisis” a thousand times these days. Many of us have been personally impacted by a lack of available housing, whether you’re a young person who has been hoping to buy your first home, but are totally unable to because of high costs and competition—or whether you’re someone who has experienced homelessness because of eviction, job loss, or any number of other reasons.

There are a lot of people proposing solutions to this housing crisis and one of them is today’s guest, Beth Silverman. But the solution she’s been working on isn’t one of the typical responses you might have heard lately, like “we just need to build more homes,” or “we just need more government subsidies for housing.” Rather, it’s about uniting for-profit landlords and developers, together with non-profit service organizations toward a common goal of getting people housing who need it.

Beth Silverman is the founder and executive director of the Lotus Campaign, whose mission is “[t]o increase the availability of housing for people experiencing homelessness by engaging the for-profit sector as a partner in the solution.” She sees herself partly as a translator between entities that typically work separately and rarely talk to one another. She knows that nonprofits have services, connections, and insights to offer, and that landlords and real estate professionals can bring innovation, capital and access to housing, for homeless people or people at risk of homelessness.

During its short time in operation, the Lotus Campaign has already housed more than 360 individuals and families for a cost to their organization of less than $1,000 per person each year, and most of those people are able to stay housed after their participation in the program ends.

Additional Show Notes

Visit the Lotus Campaign website.
Send your story ideas and guest suggestions to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Karla Theilen: A Neighborhood Storyteller May 19, 2022

Today’s guest has built trails in the Grand Canyon, lived atop a tower as a forest fire lookout, and served as a traveling nurse. She’s also Strong Towns’ 2022 Neighborhood Storyteller, with weekly columns publishing every Tuesday, sharing about life in her neighborhoods and the small steps she’s taking to make them a little stronger.

Karla Theilen lives in Missoula, Montana, but also spends time in other parts of the state through her nursing work, and visits Minnesota regularly, where she grew up and still has family. In this conversation, Karla talks about the way she finds value, connection, and things to celebrate, wherever she’s visiting, and treats all these places as temporary homes. You’re more likely to find her in a local coffee shop perusing the community bulletin boards than in a chain restaurant because she knows that the local spots are where the best stories can be found.

We’ve been honored to feature some of those stories in Karla’s weekly column on the Strong Towns website, and we’re excited for you to hear from her today about everything from crafting and hobbies, to the things she’s learned while walking her dog, to her attitude of saying “yes” to adventure.

Additional Show Notes

Subscribe to the Life in a Strong Town Substack.
Read all of Karla’s columns.
Learn more about our open Member Advocate position and apply today. (Applications due by 11:59 p.m. CT on May 22, 2022.)
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Cooper Frost: Incremental Change in a Small Town May 12, 2022

There’s something special about Michigan. Two of our past seven Strongest Town Contest winners have come from the state (Muskegon and Traverse City), we hear inspiring stories from Michigan all the time, and we have some amazing, dedicated members doing good work in the Great Lakes state.

Today’s guest is one of those people. Cooper Frost hails from Charlotte, Michigan, a rural community of about 10,000 people outside of Lansing. For a while, he had been absent from the town, but during the pandemic, he came home to Charlotte and has since made it his mission to help it grow stronger.

He’s stepped up to get involved in a number of local organizations with a particular focus on economic development. He’s also purchased his mother’s house, and has begun investing in it to help build up generational wealth and stability. Additionally, Frost has been dedicated to sharing the message about bottom-up, incremental transformation through talking with community members about the Strong Towns movement and books.

Frost is part of a long line of advocates, many of whom we’ve featured on this show, who believe in their hometowns and want to see them thrive. He knows that building up passion for the place where he came from will help those around him see its value and make it stronger over the long run. He’s all about taking that next smallest step to see this vision come to fruition.

Additional Show Notes

Charlotte Rising website.
Learn more about our open Member Advocate position and apply today.
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

David Cantu and Maya Sanchez: Helping Neighbors Grow (and Sell!) Their Own Food May 05, 2022

Today’s guests are doing innovative agriculture work that is deeply rooted in history in their small town of San Elizario, Texas. David Cantu and Maya Sanchez are two local government leaders who have helped spearhead projects to encourage San Elizario residents to grow food for themselves and food to sell—all tailored to their unique desert environment. They’re tapping into historical knowledge of what plants grow best in these conditions and hoping other desert-dwellers can learn from this, too.

These efforts are particularly meaningful in a border town where almost half of the population lives below the poverty line. These are opportunities to grow food in backyards and gardens to feed one’s family, and this program has also helped residents grow produce to sell to local restaurants and stores, or turn into other food businesses, themselves.

David Cantu is an alderperson and Maya Sanchez in the City Administrator for San Elizario. Both are very active in their city, in this agricultural initiative, and in their own gardens, too.

We interviewed Cantu and Sanchez for an article back in 2020, and, as you’ll hear in this interview, since that time they’ve helped more of the community be involved in growing food, connected these efforts with flood mitigation goals, and even had the chance to sell locally grown produce to neighboring cities.

Additional Show Notes

“This Texas Town Is Growing Stronger By Thinking *Inside* the Box”,” by Rachel Quednau, Strong Towns (August 2020).
Learn more about our open Member Advocate position and apply today.
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Jay Stange: Slowing Down Cars and Building Up Neighborhoods Apr 28, 2022

Jay Stange is a former newspaper reporter, teacher, community organizer, and Alaska native. He’s also the Content Manager at Strong Towns. In this conversation, he’s talking about his efforts to slow down cars on busy stroads in both his former neighborhood in Anchorage, as well as his current neighborhood in West Hartford, Connecticut.

Jay discusses the ways he’s worked with neighbors to push for the change, tested out temporary approaches, and addressed the concerns of business owners along the roads in question. In his working class, renter-dominated neighborhood in Anchorage, these efforts were also part of a larger movement to help people believe in the future of their neighborhood and combat apathy—to show people that they had something to be proud of in their community.

In the episode, we also talk about Jay’s lifelong love of biking, from riding his bike to sports practice as a kid when his parents couldn’t drive him, to bike commuting and biking with his own kids today. Plus, we discuss Jay’s belief that change should look fun and it should happen collaboratively. We know you’re going to appreciate the energy and passion Jay brings to this conversation. It’s something he brings to all of his work at Strong Towns.

Additional Show Notes

“The Road that Killed a City,” by Jay Stange, Strong Towns (March 2022).
“The Pedalling Pastor,” by Jay Stange, Strong Towns (March 2022).
Read all articles by Jay.
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Carlos Alfaro and Jacob Pritchett: Reaching Across Political Divides Apr 21, 2022

It’s news to exactly no one that we’re living in polarized times. But Strong Towns advocates are doing their best to push back against polarization in their communities. In fact, it’s a core value of our movement that we work with people on all parts of the political spectrum, because we know that the change we seek across North America won’t happen without everyone on board.

Today’s guests on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel Quednau, are doing the challenging but important work of bridging political divides in their home state. Carlos Alfaro and Jacob Pritchett founded Arizona Talks as a platform for learning, dialogue, and connection for individuals impacting public policy. They facilitate debates, conversations, and dialogues amongst residents and leaders throughout Arizona. It’s a diverse state full of lots of different political views, and Carlos and Jacob have navigated those waters to bring together Democrats, Republicans, and folks between and outside those labels for constructive conversation on the issues that matter.

In this interview, they talk about how this project came to be, some of their successes and failures, and their advice for others trying to build common ground in a polarized time.

Additional Show Notes

Arizona Talks website.
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Christa Theilen and Seairra Shepherd: Small-Scale Rural Farming Apr 14, 2022

We have two special guests today: Strong Towns staff members Christa Theilen and Seairra Shepherd. Christa works as Strong Towns’ office assistant in our Brainerd, Minnesota, office and Seairra is a writer and multimedia creator based in central Illinois.

But besides serving at Strong Towns, they both also work part time at local small-scale farms. Christa’s is a vegetable farm and Seairra’s, an animal farm. We invited them on the show to talk about their experiences in this vital industry: growing the food we all eat and need to survive, and growing it close to home so it doesn’t require costly shipping or rely on global supply chains to get to our kitchens.

This life isn’t easy. Christa and Seairra both talk about the round-the-clock, 365-day nature of farm work, but also how much they love it and how rewarding it is to be outside, getting your hands dirty and literally seeing the fruits of your labor. They discuss the growing interest they’ve witnessed in local food in their regions and the ways their farms have gotten connected with people in the surrounding towns.

This isn’t the first conversation we’ve had with a local farmer on The Bottom-Up Revolution. But we think Christa and Seairra offer a unique perspective as workers on rural farms in the modern age.

Additional Show Notes

Brambling Rows Farm (Brainerd, MN)
Trillium Dell Farm (Knoxville, IL)
Previous podcast episodes about local food: “Beth Hoffman: Getting Real About the Cost—and Value—of Farming,” “Alfred Melbourne: Growing Food, Growing Resilience,” and “Alex Hagler: An Entrepreneur Creating Opportunities for Other Entrepreneur.”
Read articles by Seairra Shepherd.
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Robin Roemer: Stopping a Harmful Highway Project Apr 07, 2022

A few years back, we published an op-ed from a Strong Towns reader who was fighting a proposed highway project in San Jose, California, near his child’s school—mere yards away, to be exact.

The highway expansion would make a key crossing—where hundreds of children and parents walked to the school building every day—extremely dangerous. It would also bring noise and pollution into kids’ classrooms, strip recreational land away from the school, and, as with every highway expansion project, cost taxpayers millions of dollars to implement. The justification for the project from the DOT was basically: We planned for this a few decades ago and we finally got the funding, so let’s build it.

Today’s guest is the author of that initial op-ed and a leading community activist in the fight against the project. Robin Roemer got in touch with us a little while ago to say that, after a four-year battle, he and his neighbors had finally succeeded in getting the city council to vote unanimously against the project. You’re about to hear his story of persistence, of bringing neighbors together to show that they have power over the future of their community and they don’t have to accept a harmful project being handed down from on high.

Roemer has helpful advice for any community organizing effort, too: give people the facts and voice to help them make decisions for themselves, use peoples’ energy wisely, pace yourself for long-term efforts, and, also, you don’t have to participate in government processes that are rigged against you. He’s got a great story about not showing up for a city council meeting but instead, arranging a separate meeting for the community that would actually allow them to attend and voice their concerns. We’ll let him tell the rest…

Additional Show Notes

“A Literal Bridge From the Future to the Past,” by Robin Roemer (Strong Towns, October 2018).
“After a fierce fight, San Jose abandons ‘extremely dangerous’ overpass project,” by Maggie Angst (The Mercury News, February 2022).
California Walks website.
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Strongest Town 2022: Jasper, IN Mar 28, 2022

Welcome to a special Strongest Town contest episode, featuring a competitor in the Final Four round of our competition: Jasper, Indiana. Our guest is the Director of Community Development and Planning, Darla Blazey. You can learn more about the contest and vote in this match-up against Yellow Springs, Ohio, by visiting strongtowns.org/strongesttown.

Strongest Town 2022: Yellow Springs, OH Mar 28, 2022

Welcome to a special Strongest Town contest episode, featuring a competitor in the Final Four round of our competition: Yellow Springs, Ohio. Our guest is the village council president, Brain Housh. You can learn more about the contest and vote in this match-up against Jasper, Indiana, by visiting strongtowns.org/strongesttown.

Strongest Town 2022: Norwood, OH Mar 28, 2022

Welcome to a special Strongest Town contest episode, featuring a competitor in the Final Four round of our competition: Norwood, Ohio. Our guest is a resident and board member of a local community development corporation, Alisha Loch. You can learn more about the contest and vote in this match-up against Durango, Colorado, by visiting strongtowns.org/strongesttown.

Strongest Town 2022: Durango, CO Mar 28, 2022

Welcome to a special Strongest Town contest episode, featuring a competitor in the Final Four round of our competition: Durango, Colorado. Our guest is Durango city planner, Bryce Bierman. You can learn more about the contest and vote in this match-up against Norwood, Ohio, by visiting strongtowns.org/strongesttown.

Rosemarie Rossetti: Designing Homes that Work for Everyone Mar 17, 2022

Today’s guest on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast is an expert in universal design: an approach to building spaces in a way that benefits both people living with disabilities and people who aren’t.

After an accident several decades ago, Rosemarie Rossetti began using a wheelchair and she and her husband quickly realized the home they lived in would no longer accommodate her needs. After searching for a more accessible place to live and coming up short, they decided to build their own universally designed home and use it as a “living laboratory” to show others what is possible in home construction.

Whether you live with a disability or not, know that many of your neighbors and fellow residents do and, as we age, it’s likely that we may also one day desire homes that accommodate mobility challenges or other needs. What would it mean to be able to stay in our current houses or apartments rather than having to move to a facility? This is the promise of universal design, among other things, and it doesn’t have to cost a lot to implement, either.

Rosemarie Rossetti is a speaker, author, and leader in this field. We hope you enjoy this conversation about universal design.

Additional Show Notes

Rosemarie Rossetti’s website
Universal Design Living Laboratory website
Check out the Universal Design Toolkit
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

A Special Update Episode Featuring 4 Previous Guests Mar 10, 2022

Today, we're featuring updates from four guests who were on the show in the last couple of years.

We’ll first hear from Marilyn Burns, who’s helping lead an effort to create a community laundry co-op in the Woodhill neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio.

We’ll also hear from Alex Rodriguez, a Strong Towns member who’s been involved in an ongoing process to help revitalize his rural town of Lexington, New York, through arts, housing, and small business.

Next, we’ll hear from Sheleita Miller, a Strong Towns member who runs a community radio program in Gary, Indiana, and has been helping business owners during the pandemic.

And finally, we’ll close with a brief update from our summer intern last year, Sarah Davis, on her new urban planning job.

Additional Show Notes

Listen to past episodes featuring these guests: Marilyn Burns (May 2021), Alex Rodriguez (March 2021), Sheleita Miller (December 2020), Sarah Davis (September 2021)
Check out the Woodhill Community Coop on Instagram.
Learn more about the Lexington Arts and Science project.
Visit the ”Heart to Heart with Sheleita Miller” Facebook page.
Read about Toole Design.
Join the Strong Towns Facebook group.
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Shelley Denison: Using Communicative Planning Mar 03, 2022

Shelley Denison is a Strong Towns advocate and city planner in Sandy, Oregon, a town that’s going through some challenges that should be very familiar to you: concerns about traffic and congestion, questions about what it means to invite more housing into your city, and more.

As a city planner, Denison navigates these issues with a thoughtful and open mind. She’s been invested in clarifying, for instance, what allowing missing middle housing would actually mean for her community (more housing options, and not developers bulldozing your neighborhood, as some residents fear).

Denison sees city planning as fundamentally about relationship with residents, and she’s dedicated to what she calls “communicative planning,” that genuinely takes into account the needs and concerns of those who live in her town. In this interview, you’ll hear Denison’s nuanced take on the YIMBY/NIMBY debate, her experience hosting a housing-related podcast, and her dedication to fighting cynicism in the planning field.

Additional Show Notes

Grab your ticket to the 2022 Local-Motive Tour today!
Check out Shelley Denison’s podcast, At Home in Oregon.
Join the Strong Towns Facebook group.
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Asheville Bench Project: Building Bus Stop Benches Feb 24, 2022

The Asheville Bench Project is a very grassroots, incremental, small-bet approach to making Asheville a little more livable, a little more people-friendly.

Today’s guest is choosing to remain anonymous (find out why in the episode). He was watching his neighbors stand out in the hot sun, the rain, the cold, waiting for their buses at utterly neglected patches of sidewalk, with cars whizzing past, and not even a place to sit while they waited. So he took matters into his own hands and started building benches and installing them at bus stops.

He didn’t ask permission or go through a permitting process. He just saw a problem and started addressing it. His effort, which is only a couple months old, has already grown into a project with multiple volunteers, positive feedback from bus riders, and some local businesses starting to get involved.

For the founder of the Asheville Bench Project, this effort is about more than simply providing a place for a weary rider to sit. It’s also about drawing attention to how the city has neglected to do this work itself. Eleven percent of households in Asheville don’t have a car. Is it too much to ask that a key source of transportation, especially for those people without cars, be modestly humane and accommodating? Our guest today wants his local leaders to start thinking about that how much they prioritize car travel and how little they consider the often much more cost-effective and resilient forms of transportation like biking, walking, and transit.

Overall, our guest’s message is simple but so important: If you see something wrong in your city, you have the power to fix it. And you should step up and do just that.

Additional Show Notes

Grab your ticket to the 2022 Local-Motive Tour today!
Check out the Asheville Bench Project on Instagram.
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Rebecca McQuillen and Rodger Kube: Forming a Community Land Trust Feb 17, 2022

The Marlborough Community Land Trust in Kansas City has been stepping up to help connect more neighbors, especially low-income neighbors, with opportunities for homeownership and to ensure that those opportunities continue in perpetuity for future families, too. Community Land Trusts are a model for stabilizing neighborhoods while at the same time allowing low- and middle-income people the chance to build household wealth.

This episode features Rebecca McQuillen, Executive Director of the Marlborough Community Land trust, and Rodger Kube, president of the Land Trust’s board. You’ll hear them talk about how they got started, including the creative ways they’ve pursued funding and built positive partnerships to accomplish their goals.

You’ll also hear a really thorough description of how a land trust works and why it’s been a successful approach in many neighborhoods like theirs. Rebecca and Rodger get candid about the challenges of this work, especially in the current, hotly competitive housing market. And they tell some moving stories of how the chance to pursue that American dream of homeownership has changed lives in the Marlborough neighborhood.

P.S. If you listen to this episode, you’ll also get to enjoy our new podcast music, created by Strong Towns Content Manager, Jay Stange.

Additional Show Notes

Grab your ticket to the 2022 Local-Motive Tour today.
Nominate your town for the Strongest Town contest. Just a couple days left to submit your nomination!
Visit the Marlborough Community Land Trust website.
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Donna Berman: Turning a Historic Synagogue into a Community Cultural Center Feb 10, 2022

What would you do in your community if you knew you couldn’t fail? That was the question guiding Rabbi Donna Berman as she looked at a crumbling historic synagogue building in Hartford, Connecticut. It was home to a small nonprofit on the verge of closing, but Rabbi Donna saw a future there and she knew that things could only improve from their current state.

Hired on as executive director of the Charter Oak Cultural Center, she and a single volunteer board member started a small newsletter and some simple events to start getting people through the doors of the building. Through a process of building trust with neighbors, slowly raising the money to incrementally fix up the space and finding out what the neighborhood needed most, the Cultural Center has grown into a space that serves hundreds of youths with arts programs, offers resources and education for homeless residents, and operates as a space for the whole community.

In this conversation on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel Quednau, you’ll hear about the step-by-step approach that Rabbi Donna and her colleagues had to renovating the building and creating community programs—and how those things worked in tandem. You’ll also hear about how they’ve adapted to neighborhood needs over time, especially during COVID. Rabbi Donna also touches a bit on the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, repairing the world, and how that guides her work.

Additional Show Notes

Grab your ticket to the 2022 Local-Motive Tour today!
Nominate your town for the Strongest Town contest.
Visit the Charter Oak Cultural Center website.
Read and listen to more stories about the intersection between religious communities and Strong Towns issues.
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

De’Nita Wright: Community Power Through Co-Ops Feb 03, 2022

De’Nita Wright comes from a family of activists, and has been involved with bringing neighbors together for cooperative organizing around affordable housing and food access in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. She’s the featured guest on today’s episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel Quednau.

Wright is the founder of the Coalition of West Louisville Neighborhood Associations and also serves on the board of the Louisville Association for Community Economics. Both efforts are focused on connecting neighbors with one another to build broad-based support for goals like a new community grocery store, or efforts to preserve home ownership in the neighborhood. Wright has watched band-aid government programs try and fail to help her community, and sees outside money making its way into her neighborhood in a negative way.

She’s a strong believer in the power of co-ops as a long-term solution to economic challenges. For Wright, cooperative organizations are the way of the future, ensuring that residents have a say in what takes place in their neighborhood, and have the collective power to make it happen.

Additional Show Notes

Grab your ticket to the 2022 Local-Motive Tour today!
Nominate your town for the Strongest Town contest.
Visit the Louisville Association for Community Economics website.
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Gracen Johnson: A Neighborhood Person Jan 27, 2022

Gracen Johnson, a founding member and long-time contributor to Strong Towns, recently had that now-common experience of moving mid-pandemic—to Ottawa in Canada. Yet she’s found small but powerful ways to get to know neighbors and be a positive part of her neighborhood. Having a dog to walk regularly helps. So does observing what’s going on around her and finding ways to plug into that, rather than showing up with her own agenda. If you’ve heard of our "4-Step Process for Public Investment" at Strong Towns, this is exactly what Gracen is talking about.

Gracen has lived in rural and urban areas, but she says she’s not a city person or a small town person—rather, she’s “a neighborhood person.” In this episode, you’ll hear a lot from Gracen about how to connect with your neighbors and, as she says, “give more than you take” with those around you. Near the end of the interview, we also have an interesting conversation about top-down versus bottom-up advocacy, because the reason Gracen moved to Toronto was to work for a quasi-federal government housing agency. It’s certainly a valuable discussion.

Additional Show Notes

Grab your ticket to the 2022 Local-Motive Tour today!
Nominate your town for the Strongest Town contest.
Read Strong Towns articles by Gracen.
Read Gracen’s "Places I Don’t Want to Sit" photo essay.
Why are street trees important? Read "The Magic of Tree-Lined Streets," by Sarah Kobos.
Watch the Curbside Chat video series Gracen created for Strong Towns
Check out the popular Not Just Bikes channel on YouTube.
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Gregg Lombardi: Collaborating for Neighborhood Revitalization Jan 20, 2022

If you wanted to decrease crime in your neighborhood, what would you do? Say there’s a park where people tend to hang out selling and doing drugs, getting into trouble, and making the rest of the neighbrohood feel unsafe… Would you set up more police patrols? Install brighter lighting? Maybe cut down the bushes that protect the park from public view? These are all typical tactics that cities use.

But today’s guest on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast tried something very different: He and the organizations he leads —the Lykins Neighborhood Association and Neighborhood Legal Support of Kansas City—have been combatting crime in a Kansas City neighborhood through activity and development.

Gregg Lombardi is a practicing lawyer and has been using legal strategies to help a neighborhood procure abandoned homes and rehab them. His organization serves as a facilitator, convener, and liaison for development, helping bring together the financial resources to make these projects happen and, most importantly, giving primary focus to listening to what residents want to see in their neighborhood. They’re also spurring neighborhood activities—like soccer practice and local events in that now formerly dangerous park.

When we see disinvested neighborhoods, we shouldn’t just throw up our hands and conclude they’re on a downward trajectory that can’t be stopped. Lombardi says: “There are a lot of problems in neighborhoods that are solvable.” The work happening in the Lykins Neighborhood of Kansas City is already serving as a pilot project for development and revitalization in other neighborhoods, too.

In this interview, hosted by Rachel Quednau, you’ll see the incremental, “small bets” approach that Lombardi and the neighbors involved in the project are employing. You’ll also learn about how so many challenges and opportunities in our neighborhoods are interconnected: public space, housing, safety, local businesses, and more.

Additional Show Notes

Grab your ticket to the 2022 Local-Motive Tour today!
Visit the Lykins Neighborhood Association website.
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Andrea Marr: An Interdisciplinary, Incremental Leader Jan 13, 2022

Andrea Marr has had a fascinating career trajectory. She’s a nuclear engineer, she’s served in the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf, volunteered on a solar panel project in Nicaragua and now leads the city of Costa Mesa, California, as the mayor pro tem. She’s also a Strong Towns member.

What’s the connection between these different roles and experiences? For Marr, it’s about wanting to serve something beyond herself.

In her current position as city councilor and mayor pro tem, she’s dedicated herself over the last few years to helping shift the culture around biking and walking in her region. For a car-dominated place like southern California, it’s not easy, but Marr is a big believer in the power of incremental progress. She’s also been working on economic development efforts and helping the city improve after some dysfunctional leadership.

Andrea Marr is yet another badass Strong Towns advocate in local government and an engineer pushing for change. We’re excited for you to hear her story on this week’s episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel Quednau.

Additional Show Notes

Grab your ticket to the 2022 Local-Motive Tour today!
Check out some of our new columns: Neighborhood Stories (by Karla Theilen), Community Building (by John Pattison), and the High Value fiction serial (by Hamilton Ludwig).
Listen to recent Bottom-Up Revolution episodes featuring Strong Towns advocates in local government, including Ashley Salvador, Mason Thompson, and Rob Green.
Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Billy Altom: Helping Rural Residents with Disabilities to Thrive Jan 06, 2022

Welcome to the first episode of the The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast in 2022. It’s great to be back with you, and we’ve got an exciting episode to kick off the new year.

Billy Altom is the executive director of APRIL, which stands for Association of Programs for Rural Independent Living. It’s a national nonprofit consisting of over 260 members from centers for independent living for people with disabilities, specifically located in rural areas. Altom has been involved in disability advocacy on a number of levels, including testifying for state and federal legislatures, working for multiple independent living organizations and now leading APRIL. He’s also a musician.

In this conversation, he talks about the importance of peer support—of seeing someone who looks like you and knows what you’re experiencing, whether that’s encountering a fellow wheelchair user on the bus or meeting another deaf person at school. This is particularly essential in rural areas where the population of people with disabilities can be fairly small and services can be quite sparse. Altom knows from personal experience the power of simply connecting with someone who also has a disability. He talks about rural transportation and housing challenges in particular, as well as the impact of COVID, both positive and negative for people with different abilities.

Throughout the interview, you’ll learn that he holds a deep commitment to engaging the people who are impacted by his work and ensures that his organization is always rooted in community needs—something we’re always advocating for at Strong Towns. Altom is such an engaging and dynamic speaker; we know you’re going to appreciate hearing his story and will learn something from his perspective.

Click here to view a transcript for this show.

Additional Show Notes

Visit the APRIL website.
Grab your ticket to the 2022 Local-Motive Tour today!
Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Kirk Seyfert: Increasing Bike Access for All Dec 16, 2021

Kirk Seyfert got his start in a church basement. As he describes it, he was just a guy who cared about biking and transportation access, and started noticing a need in his community of Salem, Oregon. Seyfert heard about some neighbors who were walking miles to their third shift jobs because they didn’t own cars and the city bus service shut down during evenings and weekends. He thought that access to bikes might make a difference for these guys, and he was right.

That spark of an idea has since grown into a nonprofit called the Northwest Hub that reclaims and refurbishes bikes for low-income people, teaches bike maintenance classes, provides job training for young people, and more. It’s a great example of an organization that has adapted over time based on community needs.

In this conversation, you’ll hear from Seyfert about how his program got started, the issues they’ve been working on, and how you might implement something similar in your city. We have a saying at Strong Towns that small improvements in bike infrastructure and access are some of the most high-return investments you can make in your city. You’ll see how true that is in this story.

Additional Show Notes

Visit the Northwest Hub website.
Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Beth Hoffman: Getting Real about the Cost and Value of Farming Dec 02, 2021

In her new book, Bet the Farm: The Dollars and Sense of Growing Food in America, Beth Hoffman tells the story of how she and her husband moved onto Iowa land owned by her father-in-law and began raising cattle, goats, and growing various crops. But unlike many farming stories, this is not a romanticized tale of waking at dawn to gather eggs in your apron pocket and cooking a beautiful breakfast with homemade jam and bread, then heading out to the fields to weed your lush vegetable patch…

Alright, we’re exaggerating a little bit. But that’s kind of the vibe you get from food memoirs these days. And Bet the Farm is not that. Hoffman is brutally honest about the hardships she and her husband face in their farming venture—and that’s with land available and a good chunk of start-up money. She talks in depth about how much harder things are for farmers who don’t have these resources.

In this interview on the Bottom-Up Revolution podcast (and in Hoffman’s book, if you read it), you’re going to notice a lot of parallels between the challenges of farming and the challenges of small towns in America, and you’ll also hear Hoffman talk about why farms and towns need each other to survive.

Additional Show Notes

Order Bet the Farm: The Dollars and Sense of Growing Food in America and use code STRONG25 for 25% off your purchase today.
Visit the Whippoorwill Creek Farm website
Connect with Beth Hoffman on Twitter (@BethFoodAg).
Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.
Send your story ideas to rachel@strongtowns.org.
Subscribe to The Bottom-Up Revolution on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Podbean, or via RSS.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Ashley Salvador: Building Gentle Density and a Grassroots Campaign for City Council Nov 18, 2021

All week, we’ve been celebrating the thousands of amazing Strong Towns members who make up this movement. They are safe streets advocates in Hawaii and mayors in Pennsylvania and small business owners in Georgia. And if those references sound familiar, it’s because every one of those stories was featured on the podcast this year. If you’ve ever listened to the show and thought, “Wow I wish I could do what Mary or Chris or Haile is doing in my city,” you can! It just takes stepping up and committing to this movement by becoming a member of Strong Towns.

This movement is made up of all sorts of people and there’s a place for you here. Become a member today.

This week’s guest is Edmonton, Alberta-based city councilor, Ashley Salvador. Before her recent election, Ashley ran an organization called YEGarden Suites. (YEG is the abbreviation for Edmonton, and a garden suite is another term for an accessory dwelling unit.) Ashley has been a huge proponent of making this sort of housing more legally and practically easy to build. She and her cofounder teach classes, provide resources, and advocate to decisionmakers, all in pursuit of increased housing options and affordability through what she calls “gentle density.”

Her leadership on this and other local issues eventually led her to step up and run for local office. Ashley’s campaign brought together over 100 volunteers in a very grassroots effort, and now she’s a brand new city councilor.

In this interview, Ashley talks about the positive, Strong Towns changes happening in Edmonton, how she got where she is today, and her advice for others who hope to be local leaders, too.

Additional Show Notes

YEGarden Suites website
“Will Edmonton Be the First Major Canadian City to Eliminate Parking Minimums?” (Strong Towns article by Ashley Salvador)
“How to Get Rid of Parking Minimums” (Strong Towns webcast featuring Ashley Salvador)
Follow Ashley Salvador on Twitter.
Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.
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 podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Mason Thompson: Saying Yes to Your City Nov 11, 2021

Mason Thompson is a Strong Towns member and city councilor in Bothell, WA. But he’s not someone who’s been dreaming of running for office since he was a kid or anything. For him, it all started because he wanted some bike trails in the local park. That led him to the park board, and eventually, to an elected official inviting him to think about running for office. Mason is someone who has said "yes" to his community; he’s been a lifelong resident of Bothell, and he’s dedicated to making it a better place for everyone.

That means really listening to residents and their concerns, and seeking out the voices that aren’t often present in public decision-making. It also means running a nonpartisan campaign, where Mason focused on land use and transportation issues as an entry point that he knew everyone could get behind. Everyone cares about the way their environment feels and looks and how they get around, he says, and that was a good way to start a conversation with his fellow Bothellites.

In this episode, Mason shares his journey to running for office, the family motto that he invites everyone to utilize, and also a fun tangent about the awesome power of electric bikes.

Additional Show Notes

Listen to a previous Bottom-Up Revolution episode featuring Cary Westerbeck, fellow Bothell resident, Strong Towns member and founder of Bo-POP.
Visit the Bo-POP (Bothellites for People-Oriented Places) website.
Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.
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.

Tim Wright: Joining with Neighbors and Taking Action Nov 04, 2021

Tim Wright is a long-time Strong Towns member and cofounder of a Strong Towns local group called ReForm Shreveport, based in Shreveport, Louisiana. Tim is an engineer who joined with some of his friends and neighbors to create this group out of a desire to make the best of the community’s assets, focus on the potential of Shreveport, and help young people like himself see that it’s a great place to live and stay.

ReForm Shreveport has been very focused on action. They’ve cleaned up parks, piloted bike lanes, and even created an interactive map after a major storm threatened Shreveport’s water supply for thousands of residents. Tim and his colleagues are responding to the needs of their city and partnering with government and other local groups to get things done. That’s been particularly important in a somewhat economically divided city—something all too common in towns across America.

In this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel Quednau, we talk a lot about ReForm Shreveport, though toward the end we also chat about Tim’s new experience of home ownership with his wife, and why they chose to convert part of their house into an AirBnb.

Additional Show Notes

ReForm Shreveport website
Get information about starting a Strong Towns Local Conversation group where you live!
Read Daniel Herriges’ new series on incremental development.
Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.
Read an article by LeVette Fuller and watch her and Tim on a webcast about Shreveport.
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 podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Rebecca Undem: Helping Small Towns and Their People Thrive Oct 07, 2021

Rebecca Undem lives in the small community of Oakes, North Dakota, and does a lot of work helping her town grow stronger, and helping her fellow rural residents become community leaders. But we know her advice and insights will speak to you no matter if you live in a town of 2,000 or two million.

In this conversation hosted by Rachel Quednau, Undem talks about the choice to stay in or return to your hometown; the connections, family, and traditions you get to experience when you make that sort of life for yourself; and how that doesn’t mean losing out on career opportunities. In particular, Undem has been helping her region think through the ways that the rise of remote work can allow people to commit to their towns for the long haul. She believes remote employment and Main Street can actually grow together and benefit one another, and she’s led some creative initiatives to help people see those opportunities through her organization, Growing Small Towns. Undem also hosts a podcast under the same name.

Additional Show Notes

Growing Small Towns website and podcast
Rebecca Undem’s website
Visit our employment page to learn about our current job openings.
Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.
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.

Rob Green: A Strong Towns Advocate and Mayor Sep 30, 2021

On this week’s episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, we’re featuring a Strong Towns member and mayor of Cedar Falls, Iowa. In this interview with Rachel Quednau, Rob Green shares his journey from Coast Guard officer to neighborhood association president to mayor.

He’s passionate about government transparency and accessibility—so much so that he held office hours in the local grocery store to meet with constituents.

This discussion gets into the nitty gritty of updating some zoning codes and figuring out government staffing in a midsize college town. Mayor Green also shares how he first got plugged into Strong Towns, his advice for people feeling disconnected from local decision-making, and why you should always carry a notebook.

Additional Show Notes

“Thank You from a Speculator” (land value tax video)
Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity(the first Strong Towns book)
Mayor Green’s Facebook page
Visit our employment page to learn about our current job openings.
Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.
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 podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Sarah Davis: Data-Driven, Community-Centered Planning Sep 23, 2021

This week’s episode is a very special one because it features our summer intern, Sarah Davis, who just wrapped up her internship last week. She was a shared intern between Strong Towns and our friends at the data analytics firm, Urban3. (We heard from Cate Ryba, COO at Urban3, just a few weeks ago on this show.)

Sarah was with us throughout the summer writing important stories that use the Strong Towns approach to development and finance, and make excellent use of Urban3’s extensive research and data visualizations.

In this conversation hosted by Rachel Quednau, Sarah talks about her experience being a young planner fresh out of college, her experience as a lifelong Kansas Citian, and her hopes for the planning profession as she enters her career. Take a listen and make sure to check out her articles when you’re done.

Additional Show Notes

Read Sarah’s articles
Strong Towns series on Kansas City
Follow Sarah on Twitter and LinkedIn
Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.
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.

Austin Taylor: Using Tactical Urbanism to Make Your Town Stronger Sep 16, 2021

This week’s guest on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast hails from Utah and he’s here to talk about a cool tactical urbanism program that is helping make streets safer with an incremental, resident-driven approach in Park City.

Tactical urbanism is an approach to public space that involves making what we at Strong Towns like to call “small bets”: small, temporary projects that require little to no money to execute, which allow people to test out a new design in a public space. It might be a crosswalk created with temporary paint or a bus stop enhanced with lightweight, moveable lawn furniture. The goal is to trial a concept and, if it works well, perhaps implement it more permanently down the line—striping that crosswalk in permanent paint, or installing a full-size bench at the bus stop.

Austin Taylor is helping lead tactical urbanism efforts in Park City, Utah, where he’s employed as a transportation planner. The program in Park City lets residents decide on and propose projects, then provides city funding and city help with the permitting process to execute them. The city even collects data on the impact of those projects.

And, as you’ll hear from Austin, that data shows success in slowing down cars and making people feel safer through street design changes—something we’ve been advocating for at Strong Towns for years. Austin’s also a dedicated advocate for safer streets, leading the Bike Walk Provo organization, and he’s been featured at Strong Towns in the past. He’s a long time Strong Towns advocate!

Additional Show Notes

Bike Walk Provo website
People-First Streets program
Check out the many resources and key articles we’ve got about tactical urbanism over at the Action Lab.
Hear Austin on our old podcast, It’s the Little Things, and read an article by Austin about tactical urbanism on Strong Towns.
Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.
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.

Chuck Marohn: Taking a Strong Towns Approach to Transportation Sep 09, 2021

Making his debut on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel Quednau, this week’s guest is Chuck Marohn. He’s on the show talking about his new book, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town, which just came out yesterday.

In this conversation, Chuck talks about what got him motivated to write this book and why productive, resilient transportation is such an essential piece of a strong town. He shares some personal stories about transportation challenges in his hometown of Brainerd, Minnesota, which will probably resonate with almost everyone listening because they’re sadly common.

Chuck also shares his hopes for how this book could educate and inspire people to make the transportation in their communities better. And finally, he offers his advice for getting started learning about the transportation challenges in your city. Step one: Get out and walk. Step two: Observe how your neighbors are walking and traveling through your city, and where they might face dangers or obstacles.

You can find Confessions of a Recovering Engineer at your local bookstore or anywhere else books are sold.

Additional Show Notes

Learn more about our newest book and order it here.
Join the discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Community group.
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.

Cate Ryba: Connecting Neighbors and Harnessing the Power of Fun Sep 02, 2021

Cate Ryba is Chief Operating Officer and Planner at Urban3, a data analytics firm that Strong Towns has been partnering with for years. In this conversation, Cate talks about the important work of Urban3, which helps cities understand their municipal finances and take charge of their financial future through powerful visualizations.

But the episode also features a conversation on Cate’s previous role as the youngest city councilor in her hometown of Spartanburg, South Carolina, her experience organizing community events and downtown revitalization efforts, and even how she helped create a new dog park in her city.

Cate is dedicated to connecting people within communities who might not otherwise meet each other. She also believes in what she calls “the power of fun” — a belief which led her to start an annual beer and donuts run for charity, which grew to several hundred participants over the course of a few years. That’s just one example of the many cool projects Cate has led throughout her life. She encourages people to find the things they care about, connect with others who share their passions and join in those efforts to build stronger towns.

Additional Show Notes

Urban3 website
Get your ticket to the Confessions Book Launch Party.
Join a discussion about this episode in the Strong Towns Facebook Group.
Preorder Confessions of a Recovering Engineerby Charles Marohn before September 8 to get access to our special “30 Days of Confessions” video series.
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.

Tiffany Owens: Paying Attention to Your City Aug 26, 2021

Tiffany Owens is a Strong Towns member, guest contributor and member of the Strong Towns advisory board. She currently lives in Waco, Texas, but before that, she was going to school in New York City where she recently graduated from The Kings College.

In this conversation on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast hosted by Rachel Quednau, Tiffany talks about the trade-off between big-city excitement, and possibilities for connection and community that can sometimes come more easily in a smaller place.

Tiffany is deeply committed to understanding urban places and helping others to help shape their communities into stronger towns. She does this through her blog and Instagram account, Cities Decoded. And she’s also recently joined up with her local neighborhood association, so she shares the joys and challenges of neighborhood organizing. At the end of the day, Tiffany really wants to help people open their eyes, put down their phones and truly see their cities, to give real attention to the places and people around them

The interview concludes with a discussion about the power of religious communities and other sources of what Tiffany calls “associative culture”—something that’s becoming increasingly rare in this day and age. What is lost when we give up these places of connection?

Additional Show Notes

Cities Decoded website and Instagram.
Read Strong Towns articles by Tiffany.
Preorder Confessions of a Recovering Engineerby Charles Marohn before September 8 to get access to our special “30 Days of Confessions” video series. (And catch a sneak peak of the series here.)
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 podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Thomas Dougherty: Turning Alleys into Productive Space Aug 19, 2021

Today’s story is about alleys, specifically, how much potential and possibility they hold. While they’re typically just used as a place to park your car or stick your trash cans, alleys are also a space where kids can safely play, where flowers can grow, and, perhaps, where new homes can be built.

That’s how Thomas Dougherty sees it. Dougherty grew up on a farm in Ohio, where he developed an early appreciation for, as he says, “getting his hands dirty,” and being a builder. Later in life he had the chance to visit the Netherlands, where he got a taste of traditional urban neighborhoods and design, and a real feeling of “home,” even though he was far away from his community of origin.

Dougherty recently finished a masters in architecture and the focus of his thesis was how to turn alleyways into productive space, especially for accessory-dwelling units or ADUs. He sees tremendous potential in the “human-scale” of alleys—their narrow lanes, their intimate proximity to peoples’ homes and the innate safety that comes from a cozy, enclosed space. This week on the Strong Towns website, we’ve been running a multipart series by Dougherty outlining the history of alleys and their potential future as places for more life and housing. We’re glad to share this interview featuring Dougherty on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast (hosted by Rachel Quednau) with you today.

Additional Show Notes

Read the American Alley series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
“From Our House to ‘Godshuis,’” by Thomas Dougherty and Dr. Randall Smith, Strong Towns (September 2020).
Preorder Confessions of a Recovering Engineerby Charles Marohn before September 8 to get access to our special “30 Days of Confessions” video series. (And catch a sneak peak of the series here.)
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 podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Wendy Streit: Using Public Art to Help Small Businesses Aug 12, 2021

Lockport, Illinois—a suburb of Chicago—won our annual Strongest Town Contest this year, and we’re doing a special week of content right now to celebrate their win and explore some challenges the city is facing.

One genuinely fun and compelling story that we heard about from Lockport involves rubber duckies. Huge, people-sized rubber ducky statues, actually. During the pandemic in 2020, leaders and residents in Lockport were watching local businesses struggle to stay open as activity downtown dwindled. At the same time, a popular annual arts event was cancelled, and there was a desire to fill that gap with something else.

Wendy Streit, chairwoman of Lockport’s Summer Arts Committee, had an idea. What if the city partnered businesses that were doing well (like big box stores and other large businesses) with local shops and restaurants that were struggling? A comfortable business would sponsor an artistic, locally-made rubber ducky statue outside a struggling downtown businesses, and help shine a spotlight on that place and put a smile on Lockport residents’ and visitors’ faces. Streit also brought in a local business “passport” concept she’d seen in a neighboring city: patrons could collect stamps and win small prizes for visiting a certain number of businesses and duck statues.

The project has been a huge success, with businesses seeing increased activity and downtown coming back to life. In this interview on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast hosted by Rachel Quednau, Streit talks about the many partners she worked with to make this happen and demonstrates what a creative approach can do to help businesses succeed in tough times.

Additional Show Notes

Lockport Ducks 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.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Mary Jones: Taking Matters Into Her Own Hands to #SlowTheCars Aug 05, 2021

The story featured in today’s episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast is truly the definition of the Strong Towns movement in action. It starts with a Strong Towns member recognizing a problem in her community and then working tirelessly, persistently over a period of years to solve it.

Mary Moriarty Jones is a native Hawaiian who lives in Honolulu. Her background is in civil engineering and real estate development, but she’s also a mom to five kids, and that’s really where this story starts. Jones was trying to walk her children to school on a perilously dangerous street, and that frustration with the street led her to stand up in city council meetings, lobby the city, and eventually, upon finding out the road was privately owned (a common occurrence in Hawaii), Jones actually bought the road herself.

Then she made the changes she had been begging the city to make: planting street trees, lowering the speed limit, protecting the sidewalk area from cars, and charging for parking—putting the money raised from parking fees toward the upkeep of the road.

Mary Jones is a dedicated Strong Towns advocate if ever there was one. So get ready to learn and be inspired by this interview.

Additional Show Notes

A couple of articles about Mary Jones’ quest for safer streets, from Civil Beat: “This Diamond Head Mom Found An Unusual Way To Fight City Hall” and “Diamond Head Mom Who Took Over Road Riles Neighbors By Charging For Parking”
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.

Jenifer Acosta: Giving New Life to Historic Buildings and Neighborhoods Jul 29, 2021

“Incremental development” is a term you might’ve heard if you’ve been following Strong Towns for a little while. This concept refers to small-scale projects like updating downtown commercial spaces or renovating duplexes; the main thing is that these projects are led by individuals or teams of local residents, not huge companies.

So, encouraging and allowing incremental development is one of the single biggest things a city can do if it wants to become a strong town. Not only does this increase housing and small business options, it also puts power back into the hands of residents, allowing them to build wealth for their families and shape the future of their neighborhoods.

Today’s guest on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast is Jenifer Acosta, a community revitalizer and incremental developer working in the Tri-Cities region of Michigan, near the shores of Lake Huron. Her focus is on adaptive reuse projects—taking historic structures like old bank and newspaper buildings and turning them into updated housing and commercial spaces. She finds that sweet spot between preserving history while also modernizing and allowing these old buildings to take on new life so they can last another hundred years, even as the needs of a community change.

Acosta is particularly driven by a desire to create more rental and multifamily housing opportunities in a region that is mostly dominated by single family homes. She is also on the faculty of the Incremental Development Alliance, where she helps train other small-scale developers across the continent.

In this interview with Rachel Quednau, Acosta talks especially about her experience being a woman in a male-dominated industry—how she has found fellow female developers, built a support system, and persevered even when people in the industry didn’t always welcome her.

Additional Show Notes

Jenifer Acosta’s website
Incremental Development Alliance website
New Academy Course: Urban Design Principles for a Strong 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.
Support this podcast by becoming a Strong Towns member today.

Lauren Fisher: Building Family and Community Resilience Jul 22, 2021

Lauren Fisher grew up in Alaska—both in the city and in a very remote, fly-in only region. Today she lives in rural Wisconsin on a burgeoning homestead with her husband. She has a dog, a cat, several rabbits and chickens, and will hopefully have goats or a cow very soon.

Lauren is dedicated to building up household resilience, which, for her family, means trying to develop more and more food options that they can raise, grow, forage, and hunt themselves. But she’ll also be the first to tell you that these sorts of efforts have to start small. She doesn’t own acres and acres of land, but instead, she’s found creative ways to practice producing local food and build up her efforts gradually. In addition, she and her husband have cultivated many important skills for self-sufficiency like sewing, building, and electrical work—and they’re always seeking to learn more.

But for Lauren, these sorts of skills are not just about sustaining her own family, they’re also about being part of a larger community. In this conversation on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast with Rachel Quednau, Lauren talks about how she’s gotten to know her neighbors after moving to the area a few years ago, and how they support each other through both the good times and the tough times.

She offers advice for those—yes, even introverts—who want to better connect and make friends with their neighbors. Lauren’s focus is on abundance and sharing, on finding the bounty of talent and goodness in yourself and those around you, and strengthening a community with those building blocks.

Additional Show Notes

“#DotheMath on Chicken Regulations,” by Lauren Fisher
“5 Places to Meet New People to Join the Strong Towns Conversation,” by Lauren Fisher
“Creating Housing Opportunities in a Strong Town” - our newest Strong Towns Academy course
Sign up for Strong Towns email.
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.

Ilana Preuss: Saving Downtown with Small-Scale Manufacturing Jul 15, 2021

When you’ve got a friend or family member visiting you from out of town, where do you take that person? After you’ve said your hellos and they’ve dropped off their bags, where is the fun place you head to show them what your community is all about? Is it, by chance, a brewery, or the farmers market stand with the homemade cheese and sausage, or maybe it’s a cute jewelry shop on main street that makes all their own stuff…

There’s something about a locally-crafted food or good that just instills in us a pride for our place. It’s about saying: “This is my community and here’s what we’re capable of making.”

Ilana Preuss is an urban planner and founder of a company called Recast City, which helps build communities where small-scale manufacturing businesses can thrive. She’s also the author of a new book called Recast Your City: How to Save Your Downtown with Small-Scale Manufacturingand today she joins Rachel Quednau on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast to talk about her work and why small-scale manufacturing can and should be the beating heart of your city.

Preuss shares how small-scale manufacturing can reinvigorate downtowns, build local pride and create meaningful opportunities for entrepreneurs to start businesses and scale up. She also outlines the steps that local leaders can take to make space for this manufacturing renaissance to occur and shares examples of this work in action across the country. It’s about building on the energy and manufacturing already present in your community, and harnessing that to make your town stronger.

Additional Show Notes

Recast City website
Get the book: Recast Your City: How to Save Your Downtown with Small-Scale Manufacturing. Use code STRONG25 for 25% off anything from islandpress.org.
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.

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