Friday Faves - Your Weekly Strong Towns Roundup
Each week, the Strong Towns team shares their favorite links—the things that made us think in new ways, delve deeper into the Strong Towns mission, or even just smile.
Our Communications Associate, Lauren Fisher, noticed someone spying on her while she worked.
We made it to another Friday. This week’s been full of speaking engagements for Charles Marohn (see the full event schedule here, and note that most of our events are virtual right now, so there are lots of opportunities to attend!). Plus we’re getting ready to kick off the Local-Motive Tour next week. First stop: “Picking Your Next Bike Lane Battle,” featuring Ashwat Narayanan and Charles Marohn. If you’re been procrastinating getting your ticket, now is the time. Grab a ticket here.
The other big news is that we just announced a new position we’re hiring for: Copy Editor/Designer. If you’re organized, detail-oriented and interested in helping make all our publishing at Strong Towns run smoothly, please apply—or share this posting with someone who you think would be a good fit. Thank you.
Here’s what Strong Towns staff were reading this week:
Daniel: This is the longest thing I’ve ever shared on Friday Faves or will share, but it’s worth your time if you have a particular interest in issues of housing or homelessness. It’s a full transcript of an in-depth discussion between two experts on tiny house villages for the homeless, a movement which has germinated in the Pacific Northwest over the past couple of decades.
There is a ton of Strong Towns wisdom in the solutions they discuss: this is fundamentally an approach that takes the minimum viable response to a problem, implements and iterates on it, rather than letting the barriers to a costlier, more permanent or perfect solution become an excuse to do nothing at all. One of my favorite parts of the discussion concerns language: why, when we talk about a “village” rather than an “encampment” or “tent city” (and treat the village as such through thoughtful design and governance decisions), we end up giving residents back a measure of dignity and self-determination that can make all the difference in the world.
Linda: Like many of us, I’ve spent a lot of time this past year trying to better understand, unlearn and reeducate myself about racism, race relations and social justice issues. I’ve sought to expand my social media and podcast follows to include significantly more diverse voices and viewpoints. Today, I found a new (to me) voice via Brené Brown’s interview with Emmanuel Acho, on her Unlocking Us podcast.
Acho is a former NFL player and current analyst for Fox Sports. Last summer, he started a web series called “Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man,” and in November released a bestselling book of the same title. Episodes are brief (about 10 minute) where Acho has an open, honest conversation, with guests ranging from Matthew McConaughey to Chip and Joanna Gaines (and their kids) to Roger Goodell to the Petaluma Police Department. I’m finding these conversations, touching on such topics as white privilege, “color blind,” “reverse racism,” cancel culture, and defunding the police, to be accessible, thoughtful and informative.
Lauren: This essay about building trust across political divides gave me some incredibly useful new language to describe how differently “Red” and “Blue” people navigate disagreement and create shared meaning. Author April Lawson of the Braver Angels' Debate and Public Discourse Program points out that many organizations dedicated to working across difference take a “Blue” approach that values finding commonalities (and tends to celebrate some kinds of diversity over others), while “Red” people tend to feel alienated in these spaces. She then recommends a format for discussion among the two groups that attempts to give everyone the safety and comfort they need to hear and be heard.
John: I spent the first month of winter reading about Winston Churchill and fretting about my kids. Those two activities weren’t related...at first. I’ve been worrying over my kids—ages 6 and 13—for how the grind of the pandemic may affect their emotional and mental health long-term. They seem fine now, but I know they miss friends and family and even school. And I was reading about Churchill because I’m fascinated by how leaders respond to crises and because Churchill’s oratory is mesmerizing to me. (I used to want to be a speechwriter.) I started with Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile, an intimate look at Churchill’s first year in office—a year that included “the Blitz,” month after relentless month of Nazi bombs raining on the United Kingdom. Then I read The Character and Greatness of Winston Churchill, by Stephen Mansfield.
These two preoccupations converged this week when my wife sent me an article by David Brooks on some lessons 1940s Britain could teach pandemic America about “national resilience and social solidarity during a crisis.” Brooks identifies five factors that contributed to Britain’s “indomitable resilience:” agency, intense social connection, laughter, moral purpose, and equality. The article was published exactly ten months ago, and so it’s hard not to think about what could have been. Even before the pandemic, the U.S. was behind the eight ball on nearly every one of those factors, and I can’t see that we’ve made up much ground on a national level. Still, the article inspired a dinner conversation on how to cultivate resilience within our modest spheres of influence. Those five factors are every bit as important in our town, our neighborhood, our home. We started with laughter that night and told jokes around the table. My six-year-old’s current favorite: “Why does a duck have tail feathers? To hide its buttquack.”
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Finally, from all of us, a warm welcome to the newest members of the Strong Towns movement: Eric Breckenfeld, Christopher Brown, Americans Building Community, April Franklin, Jerichonico Fulgencio, Barbara Fulton, Joshua Hernandez, Paul and Marliese Herrick, Shane Hoffman, Rachel Holloway, Scott Keller, John Lea, Eric Macdon, Ryan Palmer, Melesia Rhodes, Matt Stigall, Christina Stock, Matthew Woods, Bruce Zavos.
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What stories got you thinking this week? Please share them in the comments.
Cover image via Tomek Baginski on Unsplash