Friday Faves - Your Weekly Strong Towns Roundup
Birdwatching has exploded in popularity during the pandemic. Photo of a house finch eating some Oregon cherries by our content manager John Pattison.
Each week, the Strong Towns team shares their favorite links—the things that made us think in new ways, delve deeper into the Strong Towns mission, or even just smile.
This week, we hosted two webcasts about developing people-centered transportation during this time of social upheaval and global pandemic. And next week, we’re looking forward to another series of webcasts—this time featuring three fantastic folks who are revitalizing their towns from the bottom up. There’s still time to sign up.
We’ve also been working behind the scenes on new podcast episodes and article series’, and we’re rolling out fresh lessons in the Strong Towns Academy regularly. We hope you and yours are able to get out and enjoy some summer sun this weekend.
Here’s what Strong Towns staff were reading this week:
Rachel: Intense political and social polarization has felt like the norm in this country for years now. It grieves me that we have reached a point where so many Americans have zero interest in hearing someone with a different opinion, even believing it to be harmful or risky. In fact, I’m deeply convinced that the opposite is true: We will only make progress in our country (even on the issues that we feel most strongly convicted on) if we try to listen to and understand those who think differently from us. That’s why this article from America Magazine, written by someone experienced in the field of conflict transformation, which recently came across my feed (although it’s from last year) was such a needed breath of fresh air:
In an age of political silos and urgent societal problems dialogue has a critical role to play... Dialogue is a way to identify those underlying issues at the source of conflict, and potentially realize shared values and areas of common ground.
Miriel: Anyone who is reading a Strong Towns has to have at least a little interest in municipal spending patterns. A couple weeks back, I saw this tweet: “Cities are just police departments with some underfunded services on the side.” An accompanying graph seemed like compelling support: the Columbus city budget for 2020, allocating nearly $360M to the Columbus Department of Police and not even seven million to “education.”
Well, this week I went looking for more data on CDP’s budget allocation, and found this AP article examining the veracity of the original tweet/graph. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are a couple of major lacunae in the original take. What does Columbus spend more money on than it spends on its (arguably bloated) police department? If you guessed road maintenance, you must be part of Strong Towns. Read the fact check (and absorb the lesson to pause before you smash that retweet button!) here.
Alexa: Marcus Henderson, an activist at the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, is turning a park into a vegetable garden. I think this article gets at a smaller part of a huge discussion about how black people have historically been barred from owning land in the United States and this is a small way to start highlighting that:
Going all the way back to emancipation, he points out, farming has been an important way for Black people to gain autonomy and self-sufficiency. But Black land ownership, particularly in the farming sector, has dropped precipitously over the last century; in the 1920s, America had nearly a million Black-owned farms. By the 1970s, it was down to less than 50,000.
I also love that it highlights what can be done to turn these green spaces into a place that is productive. Let’s get rid of lawns and turn them into gardens all over the place.
John: I started birdwatching in January 2019. I remember the date because that was the month I read Round of a Country Year, a wonderful book by the Amish farmer David Kline. Reading his observations of the creaturely life on his Ohio farm—a farm I was able to visit in person later that year—I realized I was largely oblivious to the birds and other fauna in my own backyard. I put up a bird feeder, bought a pair of binoculars and a local guide book, and started paying attention. Birdwatching has become an enduring pastime, not just for me but the whole family. And our passion for birding has only increased under quarantine. It’s not an exaggeration to say we’ve come to think of the finches, jays, doves, hummingbirds, spotted towhees, and other birds we see regularly as actual neighbors.
Are you finding new ways to get to know your neighbors? Is it sometimes harder than it looks? This week, Lauren shares a story that lets you know you’re not alone. (Photo by Johnny Sanphillippo)
Thus, I wasn’t surprised when I read in this New York Times article that the popularity of birdwatching is exploding during coronavirus. Birding is something you can start right now, right where you are. You can do it inside or outside your home. You don’t necessarily need extra equipment. And you can even do it with a friend while social distancing. Best of all, there’s plenty to see. We’re all dreaming of the freedom we’ll have to move and explore as before. In the meantime, birdwatching helps connect us to the beautiful and fascinating world that is our own neighborhood.
Lauren: Every week, I think to myself that I should get to know my neighbors better. And every week I hesitate to actually go knock on anyone’s door. This (pretty old) story by my former boss, Nick Meyer, reminds me that I’m not alone—many of us are struggling to connect with one another. It also reminds me how important it is to try anyway.
Chuck: Thomas Chatterton Williams writes beautifully — it is a joy to experience the way he uses the English language — but his prose is also aided by his deep, paradigm-shifting insights. This article from the Guardian on the intersection of politics and science is a prime example of him giving eloquent voice to thoughts that have been less-maturely rattling around in my head. I’m a religious Catholic, and like the Catholic Church, I’m also a huge proponent of scientific inquiry. I also understand the difference between pursuing truth through the scientific method and holding a belief in science, the latter which has far more in common with religion than all but a few brave progressive voices seem ready to acknowledge. From the article:
After two and a half months of death, confinement, and unemployment figures dwarfing even the Great Depression, we have now entered the stage of competing urgencies where there are zero perfect options. Police brutality is a different if metaphorical epidemic in an America slouching toward authoritarianism. Catalyzed by the spectacle of Floyd’s reprehensible death, it is clear that the emergency in Minneapolis passes my own and many people’s threshold for justifying the risk of contagion.
But poverty is also a public health crisis. George Floyd wasn’t merely killed for being black – he was also killed for being poor. He died over a counterfeit banknote. Poverty destroys Americans every day by means of confrontations with the law, disease, pollution, violence and despair. Yet even as the coronavirus lockdown threw 40 million Americans out of work – including Floyd himself – many progressives accepted this calamity, sometimes with stunning blitheness, as the necessary cost of guarding against Covid-19.
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Finally, a warm welcome to the newest members of the Strong Towns movement: Marcia Gibbs, Shirley Gonzales, Liz Hoenig Kanieski, Sara Lum, Steve Miller, Pierre Neu, Gina Saulsbury, Geneviève Sirusaite, and James Yung.
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What stories got you thinking this week? Please share them in the comments or continue the conversation in the Strong Towns Community.