The Bottom-Up Revolution
181 episodes - English - Latest episode: 3 days ago - ★★★★★ - 31 ratingsThis podcast features stories of the Strong Towns movement in action. Hosted by Tiffany Owens Reed, it’s all about how regular people have stepped up to make their communities more economically resilient, and how others can implement these ideas in their own places. We’ll talk about taking concrete action steps, connecting with fellow advocates to build power, and surviving the bumps along the way—all in the pursuit of creating stronger towns.
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Episodes
Christian Gray: Alleviating Neighborhood Poverty at a Root Level
April 25, 2024 10:00 - 41 minutes - 57.3 MBChristian 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 wo...
Sara Joy Proppe: Helping Churches Use Placemaking To Connect With the Community
April 11, 2024 10:00 - 36 minutes - 50.3 MBSara 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 (webs...
Armando Moritz-Chapelliquen: A Grassroots Community Advocate
March 28, 2024 10:00 - 40 minutes - 55.4 MBArmando 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 fat...
Maddy Novich: Not Your Typical Bike Activist!
March 14, 2024 10:00 - 44 minutes - 61.5 MBMaddy 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 Mad...
Deatra Kemp: Helping First-Time Homebuyers Realize Their Dreams
February 29, 2024 10:00 - 59 minutes - 81.9 MBDeatra 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...
Adam Greenfield and Miriam Schoenfield: Fighting Freeway Widening in Austin
February 08, 2024 10:00 - 52 minutes - 72.4 MBOn 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 Schoe...
Jessica Peacock: Fighting for a Family-Owned Grocery Store
January 25, 2024 10:00 - 30 minutes - 42.1 MBJessica 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...
Jon Jon Wesolowski: Chattanooga Urbanist Society
January 11, 2024 10:00 - 53 minutes - 73.6 MBToday’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 i...
Jennifer Gaughran: Running the Strong Towns Toastmasters Group
December 14, 2023 18:12 - 45 minutes - 63.4 MBOn 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 stor...
Dustin LaFont: The Largest Community Bike Shop in Louisiana
November 30, 2023 10:00 - 44 minutes - 60.9 MBOn 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 b...
Alisha Loch: Keeping Norwood, OH, Vibrant for Future Generations
November 16, 2023 10:00 - 38 minutes - 52.7 MBAlisha 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 L...
Scott Jones: Building Neighborhood Connections With Acts of Hospitality
November 09, 2023 10:00 - 52 minutes - 72.3 MBOn 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 fri...
Aimee and Cody Frederick: Café Owners and Conversation Leaders
October 26, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 71.5 MBAimee 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, ...
Shelby Wild: Breaking Down Barriers to Local Food
October 12, 2023 10:00 - 39 minutes - 55.3 MBShelby 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 Cal...
Marques King: Doing Incremental Development in Detroit
September 28, 2023 10:00 - 53 minutes - 49.6 MBOn 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...
Gary Oddi: A Lifelong Educator Advocating for Active Transportation
September 14, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 66.4 MBOn 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 Distr...
Barry Greene: A Dad Advocating for Density and Localism
August 31, 2023 13:40 - 44 minutes - 62.2 MBThis 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 th...
Noah Tang: Working Alongside Local Government
August 17, 2023 19:59 - 46 minutes - 42.8 MBNoah 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 ...
LeVette Fuller: Actively Making a Strong Town
August 03, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 63.4 MBWho 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 ...
Introducing Your New Host for The Bottom-Up Revolution!
July 27, 2023 10:00 - 24 minutes - 23.3 MBAfter 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 o...
Top of the Bottom-Up: Creating a Coffee Shop for the Whole Neighborhood
January 26, 2023 10:00 - 33 minutes - 31.4 MBWhile 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 ...
Top of the Bottom-Up: Taking Matters Into Our Own Hands to #SlowTheCars
January 05, 2023 10:00 - 35 minutes - 33.3 MBWhile 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 st...
Top of the Bottom-Up: Building Family and Community Resilience
December 15, 2022 10:00 - 30 minutes - 28.1 MBWhile 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...
Top of the Bottom-Up: Building Gentle Density and a Grassroots Campaign for City Council
December 01, 2022 10:00 - 26 minutes - 24.8 MBWhile 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 uni...
The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…Getting Stronger
November 17, 2022 10:00 - 31 minutes - 29.6 MBOn 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
October 27, 2022 10:00 - 20 minutes - 18.7 MBWhile 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 skil...
Sarah Cipkar: Building an Accessory Dwelling Unit and Helping Others Do the Same
September 29, 2022 10:02 - 35 minutes - 33.3 MBYou 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...
Erin Stewart: A Mayor Working for Safe Streets and a Thriving Downtown
September 22, 2022 10:01 - 26 minutes - 24.7 MBErin 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...
Norm Van Eeden Petersman: Speaking Up to Build Strong Towns
September 15, 2022 10:02 - 36 minutes - 33.5 MBNorm 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...
Emma Durand-Wood: Planting Street Trees and Neighborhood Connections
September 08, 2022 10:02 - 32 minutes - 30.6 MBA 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...
Spencer Gardner: Moving from Planning to Action
September 01, 2022 10:02 - 36 minutes - 33.9 MBSpencer 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...
Lindsey Meek: An Engineer who ”Saw the Light”
August 25, 2022 10:03 - 28 minutes - 26.1 MBToday’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 ...
Amy Stelly: Campaigning to Get Rid of an Urban Highway
August 18, 2022 10:02 - 29 minutes - 27.7 MBUrban 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...
Steph and Sean Tuff: Starting an Electric Bike Company
August 11, 2022 10:01 - 42 minutes - 39.7 MBPodcast 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 S...
Danny Schaible: Creating a Street Design Team
July 28, 2022 10:02 - 31 minutes - 28.8 MBToday’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 ...
Ari Feinsmith: Helping More People Get Out and Bike!
July 21, 2022 10:02 - 28 minutes - 26.1 MBA 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...
Montavius Jones: Celebrating Your City and Helping it Grow Better
July 14, 2022 10:02 - 34 minutes - 32.3 MBMontavius 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 ha...
Jen Stromsten and Alex Beck: Welcoming New Americans and Building up a Rural Economy
June 30, 2022 10:02 - 38 minutes - 35.8 MBIf 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. ...
Jonathan Curth: Ending Parking Minimums and Seeing the Results
June 23, 2022 10:02 - 25 minutes - 23.5 MBA 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 ...
Ann Zadeh: Community Design for Stronger Towns
June 16, 2022 10:02 - 27 minutes - 25.5 MBOn 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. Dur...
Nick and Amanda Lanata: Two Amazing Strong Towns Members
June 09, 2022 10:02 - 32 minutes - 30.2 MBWelcome 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...
Beth Silverman: Uniting For-Profits and Nonprofits to End Homelessness
May 26, 2022 10:03 - 30 minutes - 28.3 MBWe’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 t...
Karla Theilen: A Neighborhood Storyteller
May 19, 2022 10:02 - 32 minutes - 29.8 MBToday’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 sh...
Cooper Frost: Incremental Change in a Small Town
May 12, 2022 10:03 - 26 minutes - 24.3 MBThere’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 th...
David Cantu and Maya Sanchez: Helping Neighbors Grow (and Sell!) Their Own Food
May 05, 2022 10:01 - 37 minutes - 34.4 MBToday’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 thi...
Jay Stange: Slowing Down Cars and Building Up Neighborhoods
April 28, 2022 10:02 - 31 minutes - 29.1 MBJay 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 alo...
Carlos Alfaro and Jacob Pritchett: Reaching Across Political Divides
April 21, 2022 10:00 - 29 minutes - 27.4 MBIt’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 importan...
The Bottom-Up Revolution Is...Reaching Across Political Divides
April 21, 2022 10:00 - 29 minutes - 27.4 MBIt’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 importan...
Christa Theilen and Seairra Shepherd: Small-Scale Rural Farming
April 14, 2022 10:02 - 35 minutes - 33.1 MBWe 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:...
Robin Roemer: Stopping a Harmful Highway Project
April 07, 2022 10:02 - 32 minutes - 30 MBA 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, co...