Friday Faves - Your Weekly Strong Towns Roundup
Posing at a Friendship House in Shreveport, LA.
Do you want to get involved in working with the content we put out here at Strong Towns? What about writing some of it yourself? If so, you'll definitely want to check out the two new job listings we just shared today for a Content Manager and a Lifestyle Columnist position. You can read about both of these new positions here, and if you're interested in applying for either of them, then you'll want to attend the Q&A briefing we're holding on Tuesday, October 5 at 1 p.m. Central!
In other news, Chuck is out on the road this week for more Confessions Book Tour events, and is currently with our friends in Shreveport, Louisiana. We've done a lot of coverage on Shreveport, so it's great getting to meet and speak with the folks there who are working to make their community stronger. If you want to stay in the loop on when we'll be coming to a place near you, make sure to join our email list, and keep an eye on our events page!
Here’s what Strong Towns staff were up to this week:
An “economic MRI” map of Lafayette, Louisiana. (Image via Urban3.)
John: Our good friend Joe Minicozzi has written an open letter to America’s mayors in Fortune magazine. Joe is the founder and principal of Urban3, a consulting firm specializing in land value economics. In his letter, he explains why local leaders now face an unprecedented opportunity...but unprecedented temptation, too. With so much cash flowing into city coffers—ARP dollars, tax revenue, and soon maybe federal infrastructure money, as well—the default response may be to double-down on the “growth” that made our communities so fragile to begin with. Instead, Joe says, now is the time to move down a better path: “Cities that can find the courage to stop, reconsider their previous choices, and ask the tough questions about how to move forward will be much more competitive and resilient in the future.”
Image via Rethink35.
Lauren: Rethink 35, an advocacy group working to transform Austin, TX’s, I-35 highway into a boulevard, released a playable game of Frogger to help create a shared vision for the roadway. The game has three levels: “Easy” will have you hopping across a boulevard with bike lanes, bus routes, a tree-shaded median, several sidewalks, and slow traffic. “Medium” features the 12 lanes that currently make up the I-35. And “Hard” mode is 18 lanes of high-speed, high-traffic mayhem. I have a competitive streak and wanted to beat “Hard” and brag about how it wasn’t so difficult. But the point of the exercise is that getting where we need to go shouldn’t require epic, boast-able vintage gaming skills. “Easy” mode will make people safer, boost economic productivity, and promote fiscal sustainability in our cities.
A sukkah in New Hampshire. (Image via WikiCommons.)
Decorations in the interior of a sukkah. (Image via WikiCommons.)
Rachel: The Jewish holiday of Sukkot—the “feast of booths”—began this week. It’s marked by the presence of temporary outdoor structures, often made of natural materials in connection with the harvest season. You might see these “sukkah” around your town, but this article from Tablet also draws a connection between such outdoor structures and the many outdoor dining shacks, tents, and other quickly-assembled spaces that have cropped up during the pandemic outside of restaurants, shops, and homes. “Their improvisatory nature” and “unexpected presence in the streetscape” are just two of the ways the writer sees overlap between the history and present-day practice of Sukkot and the temporary structures we’ve been seeing all over as a result of the pandemic—spaces that invite us into the outside and encourage us to remember our reliance on and relationship with the natural world.
Image via Unsplash.
Chuck: I read Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham in 2019 and it made my list of best books for the year. Read the book before you watch the HBO miniseries, which was called “hauntingly accurate” (and, based on the book, I concur). It’s really well done. While the series of mistakes that led to the meltdown seem frighteningly human, what transpired after seemed uniquely Russian/Ukrainian, in ways both horrific and honorable. A report this week that Chernobyl’s Reactor 4 just “woke up” is a twist in this wicked, ongoing drama.
Image via iStock.
Daniel: This essay, “The Most Important Scientist You’ve Never Heard Of,” by Lucas Reilly, is absolutely essential reading. The titular scientist is Clair Patterson, whose research on lead toxicity led to the banning of lead additives in gasoline—tragically about 60 years too late, after a whole generation of humans had been subjected to mass poisoning. Reilly’s skillfully written tale of how Patterson, and the world, got there is an epic saga: part biographical sketch, part morality play, part sweeping inquisition of modern scientific practice, and part history-in-miniature of human influence on the biosphere. There are no easy villains here, but plenty of hubris and tragic ignorance—enough to leave you uneasily wondering who today’s Clair Pattersons are and what they have yet to warn us of.
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Finally, from all of us, a warm welcome to the newest members of the Strong Towns movement: Neal McGlothlin, Franny Knight, John A Duvall, Linda Curtis, Mason Torres, Roger Peak, and Sara Davis.
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What stories got you thinking this week? Please share them in the comments!