Top of the Bottom-Up: Creating a Coffee Shop for the Whole Neighborhood

 

Coté Soerens.

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.

 
 
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Featured
Rachel Quednau
Rachel Quednau

Rachel Quednau serves as Program Director at Strong Towns. Trained in dialogue facilitation and mediation, she is devoted to building understanding across lines of difference. Previously, Rachel worked for several organizations fighting to end homelessness and promote safe, affordable housing at the federal and local levels. Rachel also served as Content Manager for Strong Towns from 2015-2018. A native Minnesotan and honorary Wisconsinite, Rachel received a Masters in Religion, Ethics, and Politics from Harvard Divinity School and a Certificate in Conflict Transformation from the Boston Theological Interreligious Consortium, both in 2020. She currently lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her husband and young son. One of her favorite ways to get to know a new city is by going for a walk in it.

 
Podcast, Top Story, Community StoriesStrong TownsThe Bottom-Up Revolution, neighborhood revitalization, coffee shops, gentrification, taking action, neighborhoods, washington