Get the Insights You Need to Create Your Own Bottom-Up Revolution

Join the Strong Towns Community site: the newest community platform where Strong Towns readers and members ask questions, share stories, and connect with others across North America making their communities stronger. 


At Strong Towns, you’ve likely read or heard us use the phrase “a bottom-up revolution.” Heck, Strong Towns president and founder Chuck Marohn even used it in his newly released book, Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity.

But spend an afternoon reading a few success stories or conversing with folk in the Strong Towns Facebook group, and you’ll learn that the phrase isn’t a cliché. 

Instead, it’s the rallying cry of an over 2,000-person (and growing!) movement of Strong Citizens from all walks of life — from citizens to leaders, professionals to neighbors, and everyone in between — doing what they can to make their communities stronger.

This isn’t new. Members of the Strong Towns movement have led bottom-up revolutions in their communities since Chuck began sharing his Curbside Chat ten years ago, when he was sleeping on the couches of welcoming guests in whichever community he visited (though attend a Strong Towns staff retreat and you’ll learn that not much has changed).

But since we created the Strong Towns Community site — our newest community platform — we’ve noticed a shift: members using their unique skills, experiences, and perspectives to inspire and inform bottom-up revolutions in other communities.

What does this look like?

It looks like members giving a Cambridge resident — following the tragic death of a fellow resident killed by a driver in Harvard Square — the language and insights to propose an intervention

It looks like members sharing their experiences as small-scale developers to help others build the kind of neighborhoods in which they want to live.

It looks like members (and even Chuck!) helping a member tailor the Strong Towns message ahead of a presentation to his local Kiwanis Club.

This is a bottom-up revolution: readers and members who care about their place helping each other do what they can to make their communities stronger. And, through the Strong Towns Community site, you can get the insights you need to lead one in your community as well.

Have a question about your place? Sitting on an idea but want to learn from others who've done something similar? Share it in the Strong Towns Community site, and, together, let’s create a bottom-up revolution in your community and beyond.

Top photo via Priscilla Du Preez.