Bentonville, AR vs. Norfolk, VA
Welcome to this first round match-up in the sixth annual Strongest Town Contest! In this round, 16 towns are facing off, and eight will advance to the next segment of the contest based on your votes. We invite you to read answers representatives from these two cities provided to our questions about economic resilience, citizen involvement, community response to the pandemic, and more. Then vote for the strongest at the bottom of this page.
Can’t decide? If you’re looking for inspiration, check out how we describe the Strong Towns approach, or take a look at our free ebook, The Local Leader’s Toolkit: A Strong Towns Response to the Pandemic.
You may vote once per match-up.
Round 1 voting closes at 12pm CDT on Thursday, March 18th.
For rules, and to follow along with the contest, visit the Strongest Town Contest page.
Note: All entries are lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Image Credit: Michael Drager
BENTONVILLE, AR
Entry submitted by: Ellen Norvell, Tyler Overstreet, Jon Stanley, Danielle Semsrott
What is your favorite thing about your town?
There are so many wonderful things about Bentonville. But it really comes down to its exciting transformation. Twenty years ago, it was a small town (with a population just under 20,000), with very little to offer its residents or encourage people to relocate here. Today, Bentonville is a growing (now almost 55,000 population), diverse community where people choose to live, work and play.
People now make the distinct choice to move here to access all that Bentonville has to offer—from its great schools, vast amount of mountain bike trails, the popular Razorback Greenway, recreational activities for all ages, a vibrant downtown, and nationally recognized culinary talent. As the home of Walmart, the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well with a local economy focused on retail technologies and tourism. The expanding art and cultural offerings enhance the quality of life in Bentonville with Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The Momentary (modern art), the Amazeum (children's museum), and the Museum of Native American History.
We hope you choose Bentonville so we can show you why we love our town!
How easy is it to live in your town without regular access to a car? What are some steps your town has taken—or is in the process of taking—to make it safer and easier to walk, bike, or use a wheelchair?
The city and several organizations have focused on expanding transportation opportunities in Bentonville, particularly by foot and bicycle, while addressing the needs of the disabled and elderly. The city's Community Plan and Zoning Code emphasize increased density in the central core of the city, which has been embraced by the development community. All new development must comply with the Master Street Plan, which has incorporated the city's Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan, requiring more sidewalks, wider sidewalks, bike lane options, and trail requirements.
The city has public transportation that includes a bus route as well as on-call services for elderly and disabled (fees were waived during the COVID-19 pandemic). The city also offers a taxi coupon program to assist elderly, disabled and low-income with taxi fares.
The Parks and Recreation department offers bike rental, as do several private companies. We've had a few slow-street demonstration projects as well as bike-lane projects to test their long-term viability.
What are some steps your town has taken—or is in the process of taking—to increase housing options and affordability?
In 2016, the city hired a consulting firm to establish zoning districts for the downtown neighborhoods to identify areas where greater densities can be achieved. These zoning districts have allowed for a greater increase in residential densities, which increase the variety of housing.
Accessory dwelling units are allowed in all zoning districts to provide additional housing options that improve affordability. The regulations for these accessory structures have been streamlined to make it easier for property owners to build ADUs.
City officials have participated in regional housing studies that work to increase the amount of affordable housing in Northwest Arkansas.
At Strong Towns, we believe that financial solvency is a prerequisite for long-term prosperity. What steps has your community taken to ensure its financial security? How do local leaders adequately do the math on new investments proposed in your town to ensure that they’ll be able to afford them now and afford their maintenance in the future?
The City of Bentonville prepares a balanced budget every year and long-term maintenance is discussed with every project, and often discussed in detail at the design stage.
A good example of this is when the Public Art Advisory Committee recently requested landscaping around one of its sculptures. The sculpture is located in a roundabout without access to irrigation. The Tree and Landscape Committee prepared a landscape design. However, they would not agree to fund the landscape installation until a plan for maintenance was approved. So they are now looking into the options available to fund landscape maintenance long-term.
The city has an election in April to extend its bond program. As a financially strong city, this will allow infrastructure, public safety, and efficiency improvements without a tax increase, utilizing the extension of a city one-cent sales tax. Improvements included in the bond extension are streets, parks and recreation, public library expansion, and drainage improvements.
At Strong Towns, we believe that local government is a platform for strong citizens to collaboratively build a prosperous place. How are residents in your town involved in shaping its future? How do residents’ experiences, struggles and concerns directly inform the projects undertaken by local government? Provide one or more examples.
Bentonville residents have a variety of methods of collaborating with the city. Mayor Orman has established several programs to provide greater involvement from citizens, including a Citizen's Council (selected annually) that meets monthly to learn about the inner-workings of city government; the Neighborhood Advisory Council that meets monthly to discuss neighborhood-related issues; Ward Meetings held one time for each of the four wards annually with presentations from city staff on upcoming activities and programs; and the Mayor's "coffee with the mayor" offered on a regular basis where participants can talk to the Mayor about issues and concerns. Bentonville311 gives citizens a one-stop shop to submit concerns or issues. And, the city has ten boards and committees that are appointed by the mayor to advise on specific topics, such as parks, trees, the municipal airport and public art.
In the fall of 2020, the city established several Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, called Bentonville Together, including a task force, advisory team, employee resource groups, and ambassadors. Several listening sessions have been held both internally and externally, with the information being used to establish strategies to work toward DEI in Bentonville. An immediate outcome has been the purchase of body-cameras for all Bentonville police officers.
Any city plan involves a robust public engagement component. These have ranged from public meetings, focus groups, workshops, and surveys to gather input on plan development. One strategy even included an art piece created by our residents that will be on display at the public library.
How is your town proactively making it possible for more people to get outdoors safely during the pandemic?
The Advertising and Promotion Commission created a "Be Smart, Be Safe" campaign that included signs for local businesses, face masks, and promotional materials. The campaign was designed to encourage our residents to use safety measures when going out in the community. The same commission established a public art scavenger hunt encouraging residents to get outside and find all of the public art installations in Bentonville.
Several of the slow street initiatives were put in place during the pandemic to encourage people to get outside and ride their bikes on local residential streets. During these times, vehicle usage was limited to local traffic only to provide safe pedestrian and bicycle use.
The Parks and Recreation Department converted their run races to virtual—still offering medals and goody bags to registrants that documented their run and times. Also, the trail system remained open, giving people the opportunity to get outdoors for walking, running and biking.
The city also initiated #BuildUpBentonville to share ideas, resources and good news to help Bentonville citizens stay positive and connected to each other during these unprecedented times.
How is your town proactively helping local businesses and entrepreneurs during the pandemic? Describe how you are providing flexibility for small businesses and entrepreneurs to adapt and innovate.
The city took three specific actions to support local businesses and entrepreneurs.
Shortly after the Governor declared an emergency and closed many businesses, the city relaxed its sign regulations so that restaurants and businesses could use signs to indicate whether or not they were open and what type of services (curbside pickup, delivery) they were offering. This allowed the public to be aware of the businesses that were still open or offering a change in services.
In May 2020, the Public Art Advisory Committee (PAAC) issued a call for proposals from local artists in an effort to support the art community during the pandemic. The PAAC selected two proposals that supported three artists and injected $15,000 into the local economy.
Then, in July, as restaurants began to open up with capacity limits set at 60%, the city adopted an ordinance to allow restaurants located on the downtown square to apply for a permit to use the parking spaces in front of their business for outdoor seating. This allowed restaurants to expand their footprint to serve more customers. The ordinance is being extended through August to give those businesses time to recover from the economic impact of the pandemic.
The "Be Smart, Be Safe" campaign also supported local businesses by encouraging the use of masks, hand washing and social distancing so people could patronize local businesses.
How are you measuring success and progress during this pandemic? What metrics tell you that your community is thriving and what metrics have helped you see where people are struggling?
The city prepares a development report annually that analyzes the projects coming through the planning process and building permits. This data revealed that development activity in the city did not seem to be impacted by the pandemic, and that in fact, development and permitting activity increased over the last year. Permits were up 3% from 2019 and planned projects increased by 46%.
Local restaurants are among the hardest hit in Bentonville. When not in a pandemic, the daytime population in Bentonville nearly doubles. This is due in large part to people from around the region coming to work at the corporate offices of Walmart, the nation's largest employer. Since the pandemic hit, thousands of corporate Walmart employees began to work remotely, in turn significantly reducing the daytime population that provides the lunch crowd for local restaurants. Sales tax revenue confirmed the impact, with a nearly 23% drop in sales tax revenues in July 2020 compared to July 2019.
Tax collections for our short-term rentals dropped to zero in March and April 2020, but bounced back in the summer with the highest tax collections since we started documenting them. This lets us know that some travel-related businesses in Bentonville are holding up during the pandemic.
Image credit: Yuzhu Zheng
NORFOLK, VA
Entry submitted by: Mel Price
What is your favorite thing about your town?
Norfolk is a diverse, resilient city where residents and city government come together in a collaborative way to adapt quickly to chronic stresses (sea level rise and coastal resilience, racial and socioeconomic disparity) and acute shocks such as the pandemic or the usual hurricane!
How easy is it to live in your town without regular access to a car? What are some steps your town has taken—or is in the process of taking—to make it safer and easier to walk, bike, or use a wheelchair?
We wouldn’t say that it’s easy to live in Norfolk without a car, but we are actively taking steps to make it so much better. We are working on a public transit system redesign and, during the pandemic, were able to achieve over 2,000 responses from folks who regularly ride the bus—the people who matter! We are adding to our bike/scooter protected lanes every year, and have increased micro-mobility with bike and scooter share. We’ve made covered bike storage a requirement for new buildings, and have undertaken a Complete Streets program to ensure that residents in wheelchairs can safely move along our narrow, historic sidewalks.
The pandemic relief program, OpenNorfolk, brought fully functioning mixed-use places closer to where people lived, letting them avoid the automobile altogether. Urban street parking was reduced and suburban parking was removed from suburban parking lots to incentivize healthy transportation and create more human-scaled spaces. Road diets, bump-outs, street closures were employed, and multi-use lanes were added to pedestrian commercial streets to prioritize shared use by pedestrians, bikes, and scooters. Streets were also reorganized for walkability. As parking spaces gave way to outdoor dining, OpenNorfolk initiated four significant road diets, slowing traffic from an average of 47 miles per hour to 25 miles per hour, encouraging pedestrian activity and including bike/scooter lanes in the design.
What are some steps your town has taken—or is in the process of taking—to increase housing options and affordability?
We are in the process of a city-wide housing market study that will lead to an official Affordable Housing Policy and inclusionary zoning practices. One really unique initiative is the Olde Huntersville Plan Book. Free professionally designed and engineered plans are provided, along with nearly free land, to those wanting to become homeowners in their neighborhood. It is the first City initiative to give residents tools to make building affordable and well-designed houses on narrow lots possible without red tape, affording a platform for the neighborhood to grow from within.
At Strong Towns, we believe that financial solvency is a prerequisite for long-term prosperity. What steps has your community taken to ensure its financial security? How do local leaders adequately do the math on new investments proposed in your town to ensure that they’ll be able to afford them now and afford their maintenance in the future?
Like many cities in the Unites States, Norfolk is still working on sharpening the pencil on this one. However, we have been encouraging dense, mixed-use development based on traditional development patterns in both our Traditional Character District and areas that were developed in a more suburban pattern. We have developed and adopted a Coastal Pattern Book, Olde Huntersville Plan Book, and Missing Middle Plan Book that make these traditional development patterns accessible to local builders.
Norfolk is a city that experiences severe, recurring coastal flooding. In response, we’ve written and adopted a new resilient zoning ordinance that requires developers to elevate buildings and creatively attain resilience points before they are allowed to build.
At Strong Towns, we believe that local government is a platform for strong citizens to collaboratively build a prosperous place. How are residents in your town involved in shaping its future? How do residents’ experiences, struggles and concerns directly inform the projects undertaken by local government? Provide one or more examples.
The City of Norfolk believes that no project should receive public funding if it does not have a positive impact on the majority of its citizens. Public investment follows private initiative, which can be anything from a group of neighbors getting together, clearly stating a need or a problem, and coming to the City and community to work together to solve that problem. One example is the Olde Huntersville Plan Book. The civic league initiated this request because the 300+ vacant lots and derelict properties in the beautiful turn-of-the-century neighborhood were overgrown, attracting litter, crime, and gang activity. The solution was multi-pronged and involved a rent-ready program, a derelict structures program, new, free house plans, and low-cost narrow-width lots to encourage homeownership. In the past two years, local neighborhood builders have erected over 20 new homes, more than triple what had been built in the last three decades.
How is your town proactively making it possible for more people to get outdoors safely during the pandemic?
The OpenNorfolk Program is a COVID-19 pandemic recovery effort aimed at reaching the most vulnerable people and businesses in their neighborhoods. The goal of OpenNorfolk is “Healthy Businesses Together, Healthy Transportation, Healthy Creative Culture and Recreation Opportunities.” The program took place throughout the entire City of Norfolk and reached over 550 small businesses. It took a whole team of designers, city staff, collaborators, politicians, and health officials to embrace a culture of getting to “YES” quickly.
OpenNorfolk had city-wide positive benefits that aided in pandemic relief and recovery in three areas:
Parklets, Streateries and Outdoor Dining
Streetscape Changes to put safe outdoor use and mobility of pedestrians first
Neighborhood Spots to build capacity
OpenNorfolk Neighborhood Spots were built by neighbors and volunteers in communities whose libraries and recreation centers had been shuttered by budget cuts. “Spots” became a safe place for summer refuge, commerce, celebration and learning with safe visual togetherness. The Elizabeth River Trail Foundation partnered with our medical center on “heart healthy” walks and “ask a physician” walks and rides, which allowed people who had been feeling isolated to safely get outside and have conversations with health professionals.
Printable signage and blanket permitting was provided for residents to close their own neighborhood streets for recreation, learning, arts and cultural activities.
How is your town proactively helping local businesses and entrepreneurs during the pandemic? Describe how you are providing flexibility for small businesses and entrepreneurs to adapt and innovate.
Norfolk immediately authorized the use of CARES Act funding to distribute over $1.5 million to struggling neighborhoods and small businesses. Blanket permits were written for pedestrian-commercial streets to allow for street closures, road diets, and outdoor dining. Sign permits and ordinances were frozen to allow small businesses to advertise in innovative new ways to attract customers or to operate out of their homes. Easy-to-read illustrated outdoor dining guidelines were written to make the 60+ page (and constantly evolving) Governor’s Executive Orders easy for small businesses and entrepreneurs to understand. Markets were scheduled every week at the Neighborhood Spots, and artists and others were paid for their time and encouraged to charge for their services. All markets had a no-fees sign-up, and many new businesses were born. The OpenNorfolk Streateries program is permitted through December of 2022, encouraging restaurants to invest in the outdoors to expand their capacity.
How are you measuring success and progress during this pandemic? What metrics tell you that your community is thriving and what metrics have helped you see where people are struggling?
During the pandemic, Norfolk was the only city in our region where the OpenNorfolk rapid response team drove to every single restaurant and prioritized equity by putting women and minority-owned business first. As we delivered free furniture, string lights, stanchions and heaters, we collected information and stories and financial data from our local businesses who were struggling. We requested, and they openly shared their financials, so that we could better understand how the pandemic was negatively affecting their business and how adding outdoor dining and Streateries rapidly improved their income. Restaurants were able to add over $1200/parking spot to their daily revenue.
The OpenNorfolk Neighborhood Spots were temporary, fully programmed parks that paired the Arts with community markets, support for entrepreneurs, and public health and educational support. As a result, talented artists and musicians remained employed, dozens of businesses were launched and hundreds of new customers were attracted. Over 40 Ambassadors were hired to build and manage the “Spots” providing $15/hour employment (double the minimal wage) to community members. We partnered with the region’s food bank to distribute 32,509 pounds of food at the “Spots,” including 19,598 pounds of fresh produce, to serve 1,486 children, 1,475 adults, and 645 seniors who were struggling to make ends meet.