How To Build Strong Towns That Are Irresistible to Tourists
This article was originally published, in slightly different form, on writer Tim Zahner’s LinkedIn account. It is shared here with permission.
Strong Towns’ National Gathering isn’t the usual kind of hospitality conference. The Congress for New Urbanism isn’t a normal tourism convention. But attending both of these meetings showed me that tourism promoters need to also be involved in how we build — and care for — our towns.
First, what’s a tourism guy like me doing in a room full of passionate advocates for incremental improvements and transparent municipal finances, and who have strong opinions on sidewalks? My hometown of Windsor, California, was able to send some members of the Town Council and the Planning Commission (yours truly) to the educational meetings. My day job: promoting the communities and businesses that comprise the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau hospitality industry, an area where wine is the main product and charming small towns and outdoor beauty are the main draws. And the restaurant scene ain’t too shabby, either.
Strong Towns — as anyone who has been unfortunate enough to speak with me after my third cup of coffee has heard — is a “bottom-up revolution” that encourages residents to see the patterns of development that are fiscally and socially harmful, and then to make course corrections that will encourage our communities to create physical spaces that are financially sustainable and which contribute to the community’s overall well–being. Think sidewalks, benches, local businesses, mixed-uses, bike lanes, street trees — all those things that also overlap with what visitors like when they visit your area.
But the key here is that it shouldn’t be couched in artifice — it needs to be real, incremental steps that we take, coupled with a realization that how we've built some of our cities in the past 75 years has set us up for problems today.
I hosted a lunchtime table talk on “Tourism in a Strong Town” and met advocates from towns large and small across the U.S. One woman wanted to develop a small patch of California’s inland empire to include housing and a reason to stay; another from Chattanooga was looking to activate an area with people that was usually an expanse of parking lots. There was an artist from rural Virginia who lived in her van and wanted to complete a mural in every state, and a transplant from Ohio to San Jose seeking ways to make the capital of Silicon Valley a little more attractive for visitors along the (muddy) waterfront. We had rousing discussions about bike trails, tax increment financing and using pop-ups to activate empty urban areas. We wrestled with how to build consensus in a community to do something and when to just start doing things on your own and hope the community follows.
After a week of new ideas, sessions and tours of projects in Cincinnati, I left with some thoughts and impressions that apply to both residents of a town and tourism promoters of major cities alike:
Healthy Neighborhoods Are Just As Important as a Downtown Core.
Healthy neighborhoods include diverse uses to make them interesting and financially viable. No one travels to just sit in a suburban area that looks all the same and lacks vitality, but neighborhoods that are walkable, interesting and mixed-use will attract visitors and generate municipal income more efficiently.
You Build Connections When You Build for Connections.
Places where people can gather, spots for whimsical meetings, making it just as easy to walk or bike as it is to drive — this is how you will keep tourism money in your town, and this is how you will build a town where neighbors know each other and interact. Sidewalks, bike paths, parklets, third places, street trees…. On Cincinnati’s waterfront, there is a row of sturdy porch swings, inviting park users to sit and swing and enjoy the views of the Ohio River.
Resilience Comes From Incremental Improvements Spread Out and Multiplied.
Strong Towns call this “making small bets.” Yes, we all love the huge project and the stirring of the soul when we invoke the motto “make no little plans.” But if those plans mean we are going to make ourselves poorer and lonelier, is that the right application of the sentiment? Making small bets means doing a lot of small things by a lot of different people, so if one thing fails, there are other things that can take root and succeed.
There Are Four Steps for Public Investment.
Have you ever noticed an elderly person struggling with stepping down from a too-high curb to cross the street? What about a visitor in a wheelchair trying to navigate the sidewalk to a restaurant? How does a pregnant woman feel when she has to stand in the sun while waiting for a bus? What if we simply watched where people struggled, and then made small, immediate improvements to fix that, and then did it again? These are Strong Towns’ four steps for public investment:
1) Humbly observe where people in the community struggle.
2) Ask: What is the next smallest thing we can do right now to address that struggle?
3) Do that thing. Do it right now.
4) Repeat.
It’s so simple and elegant that it’s something we all infer and know, but it tends to get lost when we overthink or over-manage an issue. We do studies and reports and commissions and ad-hoc task forces, and then we end up with multi-page reports that are inexplicably designed to be printed on large-format printers but which only live online, rendering them all but illegible anyway. Is there an elderly person struggling with crossing the street? Fast-build a small pedestrian bulb-out to give them a head start, and if it is successful, redo the sidewalk. Are there bikes strewn across the sidewalk that block access for wheelchairs? Rather than put up a no-bikes sign ($100 and likely to be ignored) put up a bike rack ($150 and clearly needed) and encourage multiple users of your town. Want visitors to your town to drive less and patronize local businesses? Invest in a trial run of a shuttle that will loop around to interesting areas and take cars off the streets. As a bonus, workers in these areas can also use the shuttle to get to work.
Readapt and Reuse Our Spaces.
My hotel was in the former Cincinnati Enquirer building; what do we do with downtown office towers that aren’t being used the same way? How do we iterate and try small, new things? Dance parties in the streets of the financial district, pop-up art studios in parking lots and food truck events on derelict land.
“Urbanism” Isn’t Just for Big Cities.
It’s for small towns and villages too. It’s really about how we relate the people to their town. Can everyone participate in being a part of the local scene? Visitors, residents, walkers, drivers, the rich and the not-so-rich? Small towns and hamlets all need advocates and residents willing to invest their time to make their homes vibrant and dynamic.
Final Thoughts
I’m sure there’s a lot more from the conference to unpack. I left with lots of ideas, new connections, plenty of questions and a long reading list. If you are a tourism marketer — how can you work to make your destination more sustainable, resilient and attractive? And how do you do it in a way that balances the needs of the community?
And if you are a resident of a place, which I hope is all of us, what can you do to help people who struggle in your town, and how can you make your community richer and more connected?
P.S. Next time you're there, check out the CROWN trail in Cincinnati. I had a great tour with a team of advocates building a great way to see the Queen City and also connect neighborhoods that have been separated and excluded. I can highly recommend the experience. As for the spaghetti and chili? That's for another article...
Tim Zahner has worked in hospitality marketing for twenty years in San Francisco and the Sonoma wine country of Northern California. He is on the Planning Commission in Windsor, California, and is the executive director of the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau. If he had a podcast, he would tell you to subscribe to it immediately, and he would also tell you it's called the "Sonoma Spiel" and is available wherever fine podcasts are found.
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