Friday Faves - Your Weekly Strong Towns Roundup

In just three months, the second Strong Towns book, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town, by Chuck Marohn, will be released. There’s a growing excitement around the book, and we’re hopeful the book will help change the conversation about how the North American transportation system got so bad and what must be done to fix it. 

The book is now available to pre-order pretty much everywhere books are sold. As a way of saying thank you to folks who are buying the book in advance, we just announced a few bonus items. These include instant access to the first chapter of the book, early access to the video series “30 Days of Confessions,” a post-launch Q&A just for people who preordered the book, and more. You can learn more here.

Here’s what Strong Towns staff were up to this week:

A wildlife crossing near the Hoover Dam. Image via WikiCommons.

John: There’s a funny scene in the TV show The West Wing (1999-2006) in which a group of wildlife advocates visit the White House to pitch an 1,800-mile Wolves-Only Roadway that would stretch from Yellowstone to the Yukon. The idea is a non-starter but press secretary C.J. Cregg asks, “Just out of curiosity, how much will it cost?” “That’s the beauty part,” one of the wildlife advocates responds. “With contributions and corporate sponsorships, the cost to the taxpayer is only $900 million.” C.J. Cregg breaks out laughing: “No seriously, how much would it cost?” One of the other advocates—played by a young Nick Offerman—says earnestly, “C.J., if we’re going to do this, why not do it right?”

A wildlife crossing in Canada. Image via Flickr.

The fictional Bartlet Administration may not have had much interest in a Wolves-Only Roadway, but, as The New York Times recently reported, dedicated animal crossings are actually becoming more common. (They’re also a rare point of bipartisan agreement.) From Wyoming and Utah to Florida and Vermont, states are building overpasses and underpasses to help animal migration, connect fragmented populations of wildlife, and prevent deadly and costly collisions. The transportation bill being worked on by Congress includes $350 million for wildlife crossings and corridors. “While transportation officials emphasize that human safety is the main motivation for these new projects, the structures don’t come a moment too soon for animals,” says the Times. “Development continues to erode wildlife habitat, disrupt migration corridors and fragment groups, leading to population collapse and unhealthy genetic isolation.” 

Chuck: I’ve used this space (and hopefully not abused this space) over the past year to share some of my frustrations with the “I believe science” meme that has, in many ways, divided our country. Science is a process, not a deity. To say “I believe science” is to say—or should be to say—that one believes in hypothesis and experimentation to reach a theory. A belief in science is an embrace of heretics and heretical ideas, not the affirmation of consensus. The quick rejection and ongoing ridicule of the lab leak hypothesis as the origin of the COVID pandemic should be a wakeup call to those comforted by simple answers from “the science,” especially in the heat of the moment, especially when they affirm or challenge our personal and political beliefs. Those who truly embrace the scientific process, even while fully knowing all its discomforts and messiness, should take some comfort in the reemergence of the lab leak hypothesis as a credible explanation worthy of examination.

Linda: I’ve listened to a couple of podcast interviews with Adam Grant over the past week. Adam is an organizational psychologist, Wharton professor, bestselling author, and host of the WorkLife TED original podcast. He’s making the interview circuit to promote his new book Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. Though I haven’t yet read the book, I’m intrigued by the conversations I’ve listened to so far, and I think the topic aligns well with Chuck’s thoughts about “believing the science” versus thinking like a scientist.

In Think Again, Adam talks about the importance of rethinking, relearning, and unlearning what we think we know. He talks about how we “favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt,” and too often “listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard.” He invites us to “let go of views that are no longer serving us well and prize mental flexibility, humility and curiosity over foolish consistency.”

Adam describes four categories of thought process: preachers, prosecutors, politicians, and scientists. “Psychologists find that we enter preacher mode when we're defending a sacred value, prosecutor mode when we're trying to win an argument, politician mode when we're campaigning for the approval of an audience, and scientist mode when we're searching for the truth.” Recognizing which of these mental modes we and others inhabit strengthens our ability to question our own opinions and open other people’s minds. “It's in scientist mode that we gain mental flexibility. We search for reasons why we might be wrong (not just reasons why we must be right) and revise our opinions based on what we learn.” Flexibility, resiliency, adaptation, and humility. That sounds like a true Strong Towns approach to me.

Lauren: A recent episode of Michael Malice's Your Welcome podcast featured David Pietrusza, American author and historian. Malice and Pietrusza, who both immigrated to the United States as children, repeatedly come back to the topic of community throughout their discussion—how it's important for belonging, safety, support, and so many other facets of life.

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Finally, from all of us, a warm welcome to the newest members of the Strong Towns movement: Jake Hamilton, Alexander Schwengler, Alex Balcazar, Anne Krieg, Rick Cole, Steven Natiello, Joseph Herron, Charles Bell, Kathleen Taylor, Stephen Schlaack, Darren Widenmaier, Charles Quim, Linda Roth, Glen Gibellina, Sara Stanton, Michael Kelly, Nathaniel Coffman, Elisa Joy Payne, Matt Pfingsten, Christine Trost, JJ Larson, Julio Arauz, Sarah Robertson, Joe de Kadt, Landon Synnestvedt, Ross Hall, Ryan Anderson, Christopher Cheape, and Melissa Pittz..

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What stories got you thinking this week? Please share them in the comments!