How this Texas Organization Partners Creative Citizens with Forward-Thinking Officials
Want to better your community but don’t know where to start? Enter It’s the Little Things: a weekly Strong Towns podcast that gives you the wisdom and encouragement you need to take the small yet powerful actions that can make your city or town stronger.
It’s the Little Things features Strong Towns Community Builder Jacob Moses in conversation with various guests who have taken action in their own places and in their own ways.
Visit any community group in any city, town, or neighborhood across the country and you’ll discover that citizens have tons of ideas for their community. They envision a community where their neighbors can safely walk in their neighborhood; access healthy food; and connect in a meaningful way with elected officials.
People have ideas—however, without support from the community, including elected officials, they likely won’t act on those neighborhood-boosting ideas (a huge missed opportunity for local governments).
Enter City Makery: a non-profit organization in Laredo, Texas, that helps citizens become owners of their city and empowers them to effect change through public, private, academic and philanthropic partnerships.
City Makery partners with citizens whose ideas align with the City of Laredo’s comprehensive plan to make their ideas a reality. They’ve worked with skateboarders to create a city-funded skatepark; created urban farms; organized a young professionals network; and co-created several more projects.
In order to create strong places like Laredo, we need better partnerships between citizens with neighborhood-boosting ideas and local governments.
That’s why, in this episode, we have Regina Portillo on the podcast: Executive Director at City Makery. In this episode, Regina shares how you can adopt a City Makery approach for your own community, including how to encourage people to share their ideas, how to uplift people to act on their ideas, and how to get local government involved in the process.