The Strong Towns team is meeting up this week for our staff retreat, so while we’re out, we wanted to share the articles written by the five finalists who applied for our Lifestyle Columnist position. Stay tuned until the end of the week, when we’ll introduce the writer whom we’ve hired for the position!

Yesterday I ran into my neighbor Chelsea while walking down Carroll Street, the quirky commercial strip in our neighborhood. She was carrying a handful of salad greens and a single daikon radish. “I have a plot at the community garden,” she said shyly. “How fun,” I said. “I’ve never grown daikons, but I hear they’re great bio-drillers.” She nodded, already aware of how this particular radish can plunge into tough soil, loosening it up.

I know Chelsea, but we’re not close friends. She served as president of our neighborhood association, and carried our complaints and compliments to our council member. I knew she lived on Carroll Street and hadn’t appreciated when the houses all around flipped into Airbnbs and she lost neighbors. I admired Chelsea for her service to Cabbagetown, but I may have kept walking after our exchange about the radish.

I stayed, though, and the talk continued. I stayed because in a few months my wife and I will leave Atlanta for Asheville, North Carolina. How many more conversations would I get to have with Chelsea?

We continued to chat about gardening. I never knew she grew tomatoes on a tiny, unpromising patch to the side of her row house. By the end of our conversation, we’d hatched a plan for us to offer our garden soil to the neighborhood gardeners before leaving. I pictured a procession of wheelbarrows in and out of my yard. What a waste it would’ve been, to leave that soil behind (the buyer of our home has no interest in gardening). I loved our plan.

I’ve lived in Cabbagetown for 15 years. Blink and you’ll miss us—the neighborhood is all of six by three blocks. Founded in the late 1800’s to house cotton mill workers and their families, Cabbagetown has had many lives. Fiddlin’ John Carson lived here, and the strong musical tradition endures. Every other house seems to have a banjo.

When the mill closed we went through a rough patch in the 90’s, my friend Olive parked on the sidewalk so she could sprint to her door faster. Drugs, prostitution, gun violence… We had it all. Those problems were fading when I moved in, as more and more people eyed our colorful craftsman homes and narrow, walkable streets.

A group of elders—vigorous women who’d sunk roots here—lobbied the city for control of our park. We started a yearly chili cook-off to pay for its maintenance, and that festival now draws 20,000 people from around Atlanta. A towering retaining wall along the freight yard bloomed into a row of murals, and now we’ve become a destination for Segway tours.

*Cabbagetown, GA. (Source:* *Wiki Commons*.)

I love Cabbagetown, yes, but how have I shown it? Having dogs to walk helps. There’s nothing like a walk to get a neighborhood in your bones, but at the same time there are podcasts to listen to, someone to call, and dinner won’t cook itself. Too many times I’ve ducked my head when someone passed. If I was in a rush, I might cross the street to avoid starting a conversation.

But now we’re moving, and these walks will come to an end. There’s a heightened awareness, an intensity of observation that has been sometimes absent in the past. A few years ago, neighbors came together to plant a row of street trees. When we first planted them, I’d walk the block every day, re-shaping mulch mounds, searching for the first buds. After a few months of babying, it became easy to overlook them. Occasionally a car would hit one and we’d find discarded bits of retaining wall to construct a slapdash defense. But now that we’re leaving, I’m seeing these trees again. Will that wound, the one at the exact height of a UPS truck bumper, heal before we leave? Should we rally the neighbors and give them a drench since it’s been dry? Or maybe I just spare an extra minute to enjoy their autumn transformation as they become little pops of gold and red lining the block.

The revived conversation with the trees echoes the ones we’re having with neighbors. I can’t recall ever mentioning Strong Towns to them, and yet when we pause long enough to talk, resisting the “get to the next thing” feeling that’s infected so many modern lives, I believe we’re building a strong town. When we mention our move, the tone changes. Everyone gets thoughtful; people talk about what really matters to them. What if, over the years, I’d paused more often to allow these conversations? When I’ve succeeded, good things always happened.

For instance, our neighbors Katherine and Aubrey live across the street. At first they seemed intimidating, young and stylish, with a reputation for throwing exuberant parties. But my wife and I made an effort, exchanging pieces of our lives when we met on the street. We learned that Katherine and Aubrey helped found an organization that farms on local land, and harvests fruit from city trees to distribute to families. That summer we opened our backyard to them, and they picked from our trees. Katherine also pointed out the Serviceberries growing right on our neighborhood streets—I had thought they were poisonous—and we spread the word when they ripened. Strong Towns has taught me that local resilience comes in many forms, including a bucket of berries shared with neighbors.

The conversation with Chelsea that started with a radish was the best conversation I’ve had with her. Why did it take a move to get me to really stop and listen? The opportunities for deeper connection with place and neighbors are here every day. They cost very little; they can yield profound results. Recently the hellos seem so much more important because they’re really goodbyes. Maybe it’s a lesson I can take to our new town.

Don’t wait. Pause and connect now. Careful, unhurried attention can be hard to distinguish from love. And love is an essential adhesive that strengthens places.

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