Think small acts of neighborliness mean nothing more than signs of a welcoming neighborhood? Discover how Strong Towns contributor Steve MacDouell introduced “micro-neighborliness” to shift the morale of residents in neighborhoods across London, Ontario.
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I asked my daughter a simple question on the way to school one morning. Her response gave a valuable kids-eye-view of the neighborhood…both as it is and as it could be.
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Strong Towns member Ben Harrison shares his experience serving on a citizen advisory committee and why you should run for something in your own community, including how to pitch your vision to city staff, how to introduce Strong Towns principles, and, how serving on these committees can help you feel closer to your community.
Regina Portillo—Executive Director at City Makery in Laredo, Texas—shares how you can partner with local government to create and foster ideas for your community, including how to encourage people to share their ideas, how to encourage people to act on those ideas, and how to get local government involved in the process.
Thor Erickson—a longtime leader in the neighborhood and civic nonprofit sector—shares how you can use nonprofits to build strong neighborhoods in your own community, including how to bring your unique perspective to neighborhood investment, how to partner with your local government, and how to get your community behind your mission.
Andy Diaz—founder at Urban Acres in Peoria, Illinois—shares how you can use local food to build community in your own neighborhood, including how to find the right investment for your neighborhood, how to grow your efforts incrementally, and why cities like Peoria and beyond need more $1,000 heroes (not $1 million heroes).
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.
Rafa Wright—Detroit native, community leader, and soon-to-be owner of a new, Detroit-based neighborhood grocery—shares how you can make neighborhood-led investments in your community, including how to observe where people struggle, how to find the right investments for your neighborhood, and how to get your neighbors involved in the process.
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Paul Fast—Principal Architect at HCMA, a Canadian architecture and design firm—discusses its More Awesome Now project and how you can revive neglected alleyways in your own neighborhood, including how to assess the needs of the neighborhood, how to measure the success of the project, and how to consider all members of the community in its design.
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We tend to talk about neighborhoods in a static way: if they’re not rapidly, visibly transforming, we assume they’re not changing at all. A look at the data provides a helpful reminder that the places we live are actually changing all the time.
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When we take the steps that make our communities more financially resilient, we often make them healthier too. Just ask Dan Burden of Blue Zones: an organization that works with cities and towns across the country to help people lead healthier lives.
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Your Strong Towns Knowledge Base question of the week, answered here.
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Your Strong Towns Knowledge Base question of the week, answered here.
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Your Strong Towns Knowledge Base question of the week, answered here.
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An excerpt from our upcoming AMA webcast guest Alan Mallach’s book The Divided City explores the havoc that the Great Recession’s continuing aftermath has wrought on homeownership patterns, profoundly destabilizing many urban neighborhoods.
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Your Strong Towns Knowledge Base question of the week, answered here.
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In this episode of our podcast It’s the Little Things, Jacob chats with Dustin Ratcliff—founding member of Walk2Connect—about how you can connect with your community on foot, including how to motivate your neighbors to form a walking group, how to use your walking group to influence how your city or town is develop, and how connecting with your community on foot makes our cities and towns stronger.
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Two simple questions can help us understand why different groups don’t seem to speak the same language about growth and development in cities, and why seemingly-strange political alliances form around these issues.
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Urban neighborhoods can appear either stubbornly resistant to change, or prone to sudden, cataclysmic change. One reason is that we’re all constantly adjusting our behavior based on what we think everyone else believes the future holds.
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The core neighborhoods of our big cities and our small towns have more in common than we might think.
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