Nominate Your Town for the 5th Annual Strongest Towns Contest
What do you love about your community?
Some of the features that make your town or city lovable (and livable) are easily visible. These could be parks, an abundance of street trees, a vibrant and picturesque downtown, community festivals, walkable neighborhoods, and more.
Some of the features might be less visible to the casual observer—but are no less important. Civically engaged residents. Fiscal decisions that make your town stronger and more resilient for the future. An ecology of entrepreneurship.
For the fifth consecutive year, we are launching our Strongest Town contest to learn more about what makes your town or city great...and to perhaps name your community the world’s Strongest Town.
The arts district in downtown Pensacola, Florida, 2019’s Strongest Town winner. Image credit.
Every March, as the sporting world turns its attention to college basketball, we’re out looking for the truly great communities—from the crown jewels to the hidden gems, the big cities to the smallest towns. It’s the most positive bracket-based competition in the world. It’s March Goodness.
We’re announcing the contest now to give you time to nominate your own community. You don’t have to be a local official to make a nomination...although you can be. We encourage team efforts.
In this contest, towns and cities from around the world showcase their local businesses, citizen involvement, financial solvency and other features, based on Strong Towns' mission and principles. They'll face off in a series of different rounds and get voted on by Strong Towns readers and members. By the first week of April, we'll have our winner.
The winner will receive a visit from Strong Towns President Charles Marohn to celebrate the victory and share the Strong Towns message, as well as an in-depth profile on our website that we’ll share with our worldwide audience. The winner will also be invited to join past Strong Towns victors at the National Strong Towns Conference in Pensacola, Florida on April 30-May 1.
Nominations are due by Sunday, February 23.
Learn more about the contest rules, process, and timeline here, then nominate your community!
Pop-up shops in 2018’s Strongest Town Contest winner, Muskegon, Michigan. Read the story here.
Once we've received your applications, Strong Towns staff and board members will review them and select the best 16 to compete in the initial bracket, which kicks off on Monday, March 16. Throughout the following weeks, we'll invite our members, readers and listeners to vote on match-ups between these towns, based on a mix of written submissions, photos, podcast interviews, and even a live webcast with the championship contenders. So if your town makes it into additional rounds of the contest, you'll be asked to submit additional materials. We recommend taking a close look at the contest schedule so you know what to anticipate in future rounds.
Worried that your town is too small, too distant or not strong enough to apply? Fear not! In previous years, we've had applicants from as far away as Wollongong, Australia, as big as San Francisco and as small as Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin.
Don't let your desire for perfection prevent you from entering this contest either. Our focus is on finding the town that is doing its best to become strong. We know that no town is perfect. Show us the best that your town has to offer, and what you're doing to become even stronger.