The Bottom-Up Revolution is... Saving Your Downtown with Small-Scale Manufacturing
Ilana Preuss
When you’ve got a friend or family member visiting you from out of town, where do you take that person? After you’ve said your hellos and they’ve dropped off their bags, where is the fun place you head to show them what your community is all about? Is it, by chance, a brewery, or the farmers market stand with the homemade cheese and sausage, or maybe it’s a cute jewelry shop on main street that makes all their own stuff…
There’s something about a locally-crafted food or good that just instills in us a pride for our place. It’s about saying: “This is my community and here’s what we’re capable of making.”
Ilana Preuss is an urban planner and founder of a company called Recast City, which helps build communities where small-scale manufacturing businesses can thrive. She’s also the author of a new book called Recast Your City: How to Save Your Downtown with Small-Scale Manufacturing and today she joins Rachel Quednau on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast to talk about her work and why small-scale manufacturing can and should be the beating heart of your city.
Preuss shares how small-scale manufacturing can reinvigorate downtowns, build local pride and create meaningful opportunities for entrepreneurs to start businesses and scale up. She also outlines the steps that local leaders can take to make space for this manufacturing renaissance to occur and shares examples of this work in action across the country. It’s about building on the energy and manufacturing already present in your community, and harnessing that to make your town stronger.
Additional Show Notes
Get the book: Recast Your City: How to Save Your Downtown with Small-Scale Manufacturing. Use code STRONG25 for 25% off anything from islandpress.org.
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Rachel Quednau serves as Program Director at Strong Towns. Trained in dialogue facilitation and mediation, she is devoted to building understanding across lines of difference. Previously, Rachel worked for several organizations fighting to end homelessness and promote safe, affordable housing at the federal and local levels. Rachel also served as Content Manager for Strong Towns from 2015-2018. A native Minnesotan and honorary Wisconsinite, Rachel received a Masters in Religion, Ethics, and Politics from Harvard Divinity School and a Certificate in Conflict Transformation from the Boston Theological Interreligious Consortium, both in 2020. She currently lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her husband and young son. One of her favorite ways to get to know a new city is by going for a walk in it.