Friday Faves - Your Weekly Strong Towns Roundup
Like the rest of America, we’ve been enjoying all those Bernie memes. We even made a few of our own. This one, featuring our friend Joe Minicozzi of Urban3, is inspired by a classic Strong Towns article. We’re renaming it “Places Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Want to Sit.”
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.
The Strong Towns team has been hard at work, preparing for our upcoming Local-Motive Tour and continuing to build out our newly unveiled Action Lab. Chuck Marohn also had a few virtual speaking engagements this week and we’re very much looking forward to the day when we can get back out on the road to visit with you all in person!
This was also a week full of powerful content on our site that we want to make sure you didn’t miss. On Monday, Chuck shared, “If we want to make things better, we’ll have to do it ourselves”—a call to action for anyone dreaming of stronger, more prosperous communities. On Tuesday, we published a young guest writer, Anthony Barr’s provocative essay “After the Innovation Revolution, Who Will Clean the Streets?” Then on Wednesday, Daniel Herriges provided some much needed clarity on what’s really important when we develop our cities: form or function? That essay is called “Boring Buildings, Great Places.”
And if that wasn’t enough reading to keep you going, here’s our favorite stories from beyond the Strong Towns site this week.
Here’s what Strong Towns staff were reading this week:
Daniel: I have no idea who Jeremy Schmall is, but he’s written a wonderful meditation on the incalculable price our economy and society have paid in pursuit of an elusive “efficiency.” Growing up in Rust Belt Ohio at the end of the Cold War, Schmall was subject to popular narratives about the impersonal, soulless nature of Soviet society, reflected in their built environment in the form of drab, utilitarian housing blocks. But that world, says Schmall, isn’t as different as we might like to tell ourselves from the Ohio he grew up in, one in which dead factories and dying shopping malls are the physical manifestation of a behind-the-scenes world of leveraged buyouts, corporate mergers, outsourcing, downsizing and offshoring. The consolidation of power in a few hands at the top is as much a characteristic of our economy as the Soviet one, and understanding that is key to beginning to envision an America that is, perhaps, more “inefficient,” but a whole lot better for Americans.
(Please ignore the mention of our recently departed POTUS in the title of this essay, if that gives you any misgivings about reading it—he’s actually barely a footnote. I for one am looking forward to going whole days without hearing his name.)
Rachel: I dig a good interior design blog, if for no other reason than the satisfying before/afters. I recently came across this detailed and informative post on a design website I occasionally read (Young House Love)—all about downsizing. The writers previously lived in a 3000+ sq ft home (while managing a couple additional rental properties) but they sold everything and resettled in a 1400 sq ft house with their two children. This article talks about the challenges, the benefits and the surprises that this sort of move brought, and ultimately, how much this family loves living in a smaller space. While Strong Towns doesn’t advocate for any specific type or size of home—a mix is best and what really matters is whether the neighborhood is financially sustainable—we do regularly get confused questions along the lines of “Why are you advocating for duplexes or apartments? Small spaces are hard to live in and most people want to live in bigger homes if they can afford them.” This read makes a compelling case for the distinct benefits that smaller space living can bring.
Lauren: This piece by Steve LeVine details the complex market environment of the roarin’ twenties, and explores the question of whether we are in for a rhyme 100 years later in the 2020s. The parallels are intriguing, with new revolutionary technologies begging to emerge after COVID-19, just as electricity really took hold in these United States just after the flu epidemic in the 1920s. Just add in a bit of Prohibition…oh, wait a minute...
There’s a lot of gobsmacked reporting about how West Virginia is leading the nation on vaccination by relying on local pharmacies rather than CVS. Local drugstores! West Virginia! Who can believe it!
— Stacy Mitchell (@stacyfmitchell) January 20, 2021
It’s a telling example of how steeped we are in the ideology of bigness. 1/
Chuck: This is a really important Twitter thread from our friend, Stacy Mitchell of the Institute of Local Self-Reliance. She explains how states with locally owned pharmacies are doing a better job of distributing COVID vaccinations than states dominated by large pharmacies. This mirrors what we experienced in PPP loans—local banks did a better job getting the money into the hands of businesses than the large banks. At Strong Towns, we know the narrative that “big = efficient” is wrong in many ways. I join Stacy in frustration that an economy that centralizes and directs from the top-down is an economy that is not serving us well.
John: Sometimes, in our need to make sense of our world, we’re willing to accept the implausible (let’s call them “conspiracy theories”) in order to explain the improbable...or at least what seems improbable to us, based on our own vantage point, assumptions, and data. It’s easy to scoff at conspiracy theories and laugh at the people who believe them—conspiracy theories are always what other people believe—but what may be even harder to spot in ourselves are the over-simplistic explanations, the “single stories,” as Andy Stanton-Henry called them in this blog post from December.
Reflecting on Hillbilly Elegy (the book and the recent movie), Stanton-Henry describes the national narrative that coalesced about the white working poor after the November 2016 election: “Economically disenfranchised and resentful of social change, they made their voices heard through the ‘strong man leader’ name Donald Trump.” Stanton-Henry, a Quaker minister who lives in rural Ohio, largely accepted that narrative himself. But over the next several years he became aware of other stories unfolding around him in Appalachia and the Rust Belt:
Yes, there were indeed folks who were looking for a strong man with a big mouth to be their angry advocate; there is real prejudice and ignorance in rural communities. And there is very real pain and oppression. But there are also folks who aren’t waiting for an intervention from big government or big business. Instead of waiting, they are working. Working to build inclusive, thriving, local economies. Working to weave a welcoming social fabric in their region. Working to start new businesses, revive old buildings, and co-create a positive future for their small town.
Drawing on sources as diverse as Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie, Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich, and The Daily Yonder, Stanton-Henry warns about the dangers of the single story. Then he gives some great advice: “Keep people complex.”
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Finally, from all of us, a warm welcome to the newest members of the Strong Towns movement: Kento Azegami, Scott Baker, Ron Basumallik, Richard Farley, Patricia Gregory, Christian Hill, Lejane Kwan, Neill Morris-Knower, Anoop Nanda, Sanjeev Patel, Thomas Rossman, Onur Sahin, Dominic Scott, Lars Stannard, Sarah Toohey, Matthew Tuerk, Samuel Walton
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What stories got you thinking this week? Please share them in the comments.