Friday Faves - Your Weekly Strong Towns Roundup

The Strong Towns staff did a little celebration week as we wrapped up work on our housing course, “Creating Housing Opportunities in a Strong Town.” To say the course is comprehensive is an understatement: Michelle and Linda counted and the total instructional time is over 10(!) hours. That’s actually good news, because someone who takes the course will have a deep knowledge of why local housing markets are so distorted, and how to create affordable housing options using a Strong Towns approach. The other good news is that if you preorder the new Strong Towns book, you can get a 20% discount on the course (or any Academy course you choose).

Right about now, Chuck Marohn is at Disney World with our good friend Joe Minicozzi from Urban3. No matter where you are, or what your plans may be, we hope you have a fantastic (and maybe even magical) weekend.

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

Image via Streets.MN.

Rachel: Does your town have miniature gardens, little gnome and fairy houses, and other small creations that delight kids (and adults, let’s be honest)? I bet if you look closely, you will see them. Our friends at Streets.MN just ran a photo essay sharing some St. Paul-area mini-gardens and they are sure to make you smile. I see this as just one example of the small ways (pun intended) we can all make our neighborhoods more fun and joyful for those that live in and pass through them.

Image via Flickr.

Daniel: My grandfather was a pilot in World War II, and I grew up in the era in which the wartime nostalgia of the “Greatest Generation” was at its apex in media and popular culture. I remember being cynical about the more rose-tinted visions of a time when Americans supposedly shared a sense of unity and purpose. As I’ve grown older, though, I’ve learned that there is a lot of truth to the notion that war can be spiritually gratifying and something of a cure for alienation. It’s not the violence or destruction, but rather the bonds of shared experience and the sense that one’s daily actions are meaningful.

In this sprawling Harper’s essay, Greg Jackson calls on us to treat the climate crisis as a “just war”: one in which the undeniable reality of destruction, in wildfires and floods and famines, calls us not to helpless sacrifice or submission but to meaningful and rewarding action, together with neighbors, to meet our urgent material needs and solve tangible problems that “do not care what brand name or party affiliation their solutions go by.” Such a sense of shared purpose, says Jackson, just might be a salve for the polarization, rage, and loneliness that seem to dominate a society in which most of our interactions with each other are abstracted and mediated by screens.

Image via Unsplash.

Alexa: I read this article recently in an anthology from Outside Magazine. In it, the author describes the wonderful, and bizarre, world of competitive speed chuting, where competitors throw themselves down waterslides and vie for the fastest times, sometimes reaching upwards of 50mph. Although this story is hilarious, especially as the author describes his own attempts to compete, I can only imagine how it feels to throw yourself down a fiberglass tube and into a body of water at those speeds.

Sign Duo creators Ryan and Ellen. Image via YouTube.

Shina: I recently came across the channel Sign Duo, and although this is an older video of theirs, I thought it was worth sharing. The channel's creators, Ryan and Ellen, are a signing couple who make educational, vlog-style videos about their Deaf and Hearing (respectively) relationship. Ryan, who has been Deaf since birth, has a mini-series on the channel where he shows what it's like trying to communicate with Hearing people at drive-thrus. Some of these experiments go well, and it's a great insight into how we can all afford to be more accomodating and respectful towards others.

In the above video, however, what should otherwise be a simple transaction quickly turns degrading as the manager of the establishment insists that Ryan must be faking his deafness. Fair warning: it is hard to watch. "This is the reason I don't like going out in public," says Ryan, "Honestly, it's hard for me to put this [video] in public… It's embarrassing, but I want you to understand that this happens still, it happens to people all over, still." Although he handles the exchange with a great deal of grace, that in and of itself is a reminder that the onus should not be on individuals with disabilities to put up with the intolerance of others.

Image via Norman Van Eeden Petersman.

Lauren: I’m moving from my home into a house down the street, hopefully sometime next month. My husband and I have been in the neighborhood for about three years, and now we’re making a long-term commitment to it. But this isn’t an option available to everyone, as Norman Van Eeden Petersman wrote for Strong Towns last week. His discussion of how housing monoculture doesn’t allow for people to physically stay in their community throughout different life stages has fed my thoughts during this time of transition. Neighborhoods thrive when they are comprised of a healthy mixture of long-time residents and new energy—when the people who live in them are young, old, and every age in between. A mixture of housing types, from single-family dwellings to multiplexes and granny apartments, can help us build strong places.

Author Barry Lopez. Image via Flickr.

John: One of my writing heroes died on Christmas Day 2020. Barry Lopez was the author of more than a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction, including Arctic Dreams, which won the National Book Award, and Of Wolves and Men, which was a finalist. My favorite Lopez book is one he edited, Home Ground. It’s a kind of lexicon of the American landscape, with hundreds of contributions from dozens of great nature writers—including personal favorites like Terry Tempest Williams, Barbara Kingsolver, Scott Russell Sanders, Jon Krakauer, and more. But instead of straight-up definitions of mesa, placer deposit, and fault spring, the contributors let loose a little. For example, a word of interest for many Strong Towns readers, cul-de-sac:

Cul-de-sacs (French, literally the bottom of the bag) feature prominently in housing developments, where they establish the quiet loop of a dead-end street. A city’s blind alleys are also cul-de-sacs. Similarly, a cul-de-sac may be a blind lead in a cave, a passage that has but one entrance and exit. The term also refers to a swallowhole down which a stream once disappeared, but which is now abandoned and partially filled in. A cul-de-sac is both a turn-around and a turn-away. A tranquil if limited space. The pause before the return. (Donna Seaman)

This week I went looking for some Barry Lopez interviews and I came across a good one from the 2019 Sun Valley Writers’ Conference. Aired over two episodes on Idaho Public Television, Lopez talks about a book project that took him 25 years to finish, the ethical considerations that arise from being a widely-traveled nature writer, surviving traumatic childhood sexual abuse, and the importance of hope. 

I was especially drawn to something Lopez said (in Part Two) about the importance of community elders. Community elders aren’t necessarily older, but rather people of any age who can be trusted to listen well, remain calm in the midst of chaos, make selfless decisions, and who “embody the history of their community.” Once when some neighbors on our country road had a serious rift—a dog belonging to one had killed the other’s chicken—my wife and I suggested they turn to the neighborhood “elders” for mediation. These folks had never been appointed as elders, but we all recognized them as such. At every level of society, from the block to the gilded halls of power, we’re facing an array of complex challenges. To address them well, we need more elders at the table. I’m curious: Who are the elders on your block?

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Finally, from all of us, a warm welcome to the newest members of the Strong Towns movement: Marcus Batson, Patrick Gossett, Samuel F. Page, Mary Urrutia, Justina Voulgaris, Jose Sanchez, Victoria Kelly, Zachery Riordan, Barbara Kanter, Joshua Chapman, and Nate Cole.

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