It's easy to get into a rut and miss the beauty and promise of our places. Here's how beekeeping led one writer to discover that the neighborhood can hold the key to our sense of purpose, hope and joy.
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Want to feel a deeper attachment to the neighborhood you call home? Here are six action items guaranteed to connect you with neighbors and inspire creative ways to leverage your resources for the common good.
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Reclaiming the art of neighboring may be the closest thing we have to a solution for the social isolation, the political polarization, and the superficial relationships that plague our neighborhoods. To make our communities stronger and more connected, here are three shifts we all need to make.
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Greta McLain—Artistic Director at GoodSpace Murals, a Minneapolis-based organization that promotes community development through public art—shares how you can use public art to build community in your own city or town, including how to create a tribe of public art advocates in your community, and how to turn stakeholders leery of public art into advocates.
Planting a tree, fixing a sidewalk or a street light, painting a crosswalk: these are some of the highest-returning investments we can make today. So why aren’t our cities oriented toward them? Two very different conversations featuring Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn explore this question.
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Micro-neighborliness (n.): the small, patient, and practical ways that we pivot toward our localities and the people that we share them with. While we do not always hear these stories, the tangible effect that these small acts can have on our places is reason enough to celebrate them.
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The mentality of “easy to maintain” needs to be replaced with a question of whether something is “worth maintaining.”
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The values often labeled “urbanism” are really about living the kind of locally-centered life that’s easier on your wallet, the environment, and your health—and that makes our communities more prosperous and resilient as well. But do you need to move downtown to be an urbanist? Absolutely not.
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Denton, Texas seemed to be on the verge of an important step toward financial resilience: allowing its core neighborhoods to incrementally evolve and provide much-needed new housing. Now, is the city on the verge of moving in the wrong direction instead?
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In this episode of our podcast It’s the Little Things, Jacob chats with Jordan Deffenbaugh—primary organizer of the Local Conversation Strong Towns Sioux Falls—about how you can spread the Strong Towns message locally, including how to spread the vision among your neighbors, how to give your neighbors a sense of ownership in the process, and, most important, how to get into the nitty-gritty of making your city or town stronger.
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In this episode of our podcast It’s the Little Things, Jacob chats with Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn about how you can get ideas for making your neighborhood stronger, including how both the concerned citizen and the public official can act on ideas, how to share them with your tribe, and how to take the next incremental step in making your neighborhood stronger.
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In this episode of our podcast It’s the Little Things, Jacob chats with Caitlin Bigelow—Founder of Maxable Space—about how you can build an accessory dwelling unit (ADU), including how to check the required zoning, encourage your peer that ADUs are a strong way to build your neighborhood, and discover the benefits beyond passive rental income.
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Communities of faith stand in an important position to support vibrant, walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods; and in recent years, some have stepped up to the challenge at a variety of different scales.
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One of the best ways to deeply understand the place you live is to slow down—way down—the way you get around it.
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When the housing market is depressed and you can’t get a return on your investment, there is little incentive to put any money into improvements. It’s a vicious cycle that several Akron nonprofits are trying to break.
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When a neighborhood commercial street comes back to life, the whole city benefits.
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How can city governments and neighborhood groups work together effectively to make their town stronger?
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What two very different reviews of the same movie can tell us about the state of the American political divide.
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Front porches direct us outside of ourselves, connect us with our neighbors and create a foundation for collective flourishing.
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If you want to make your neighborhood a better place, you have to get outside and meet the people around you. Here are 9 ideas to get you started.
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