Friday Faves - Your Weekly Strong Towns Roundup
Next week, the Strong Towns team will be convening in Florida for our winter staff retreat—and to meet our four newest colleagues. We’re looking forward to introducing you to them, too, and are excited about the talent they’re bringing onto the crew. We’ll also be planning for all the big, new initiatives Strong Towns will be taking on in 2023, so get ready, because we’ve got a lot of cool stuff coming your way soon!
Here’s what Strong Towns staff were up to this week:
(Source: Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Chicago Sun-Times.)
Mike: I’m just getting tuned into my new home city’s transportation issues, so I found this article both relevant and timely. It’s no secret that the most reliable transit in Chicago is on the north side, and much of that is because the money and loudest advocates are concentrated up here. When a community loses an L stop, it is essentially cut off from the most reliable transportation system Chicago offers. The neighborhood loses out on business, people have to buy cars and add hours to commute times waiting on the less-reliable buses, and it isolates the population living there.
“You know, a lot of communities get their L stops reopened,” said Chicago resident Evangeline Fraise. “They spend millions rehabbing other L stations, and yet ours was ignored until now. It’s heartbreaking to me, because a lot of people that wanted to see this happen have aged out or died or moved on.”
The article touches on how the top-down approach of the CTA won’t touch this stop—it will take a grassroots movement and community support to convince the city to even consider the cost of reopening this station. This pulled my heartstrings because I resonate with the struggle to convince people that transportation options are good for everyone. This reopening is a no-brainer to make this neighborhood a better place. I hope the referendum passes and the city “Green Light(s) the Green Line.”
(Source: The Wall Street Journal.)
Edward: Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb Inc., is leaving the short-term rental company to begin a new start-up to provide accessory dwelling units (ADUs) for backyards. I love the idea of a process where homeowners could order a new small house that is manufactured and delivered to your backyard. Personally, I would love to pick out an ADU from a catalog, the same way I would select furniture from IKEA. This could lower the bar of entry by simplifying the process of introducing additional, new housing, into your community.
This start-up was inspired through top-down legislation in California which legalized ADUs. However, buried in this article is the sticker shock of $299,000 for 430-square-foot studios to $339,000 for 550-square-foot one-bedroom units. Just because the ADU is allowed, does not necessarily translate that it is possible. This illustrates the real barriers for implementation that remain in California, and thus the uphill struggle that remains to provide housing in our communities.
This start-up tackles one piece of the puzzle by providing a housing product. As these are brought to market, the next struggle will be at the local level to tackle the regulatory hurdles to lower the cost for adding ADUs to our communities.
(Source: Travis Colbert/Unsplash.)
Lauren: Adam Barker, who lives in Lansing, Illinois, has been working to change the ordinances in his community to allow for backyard chicken keeping. The response has not been what he hoped; the mayor and town board seem uninterested in hearing the matter. When he emailed me recently asking about “the Strong Towns” take on the subject, his story stuck out to me, because of the incremental steps Barker has taken to change his community for the better. Upon hearing the concerns his fellow community members held about chicken keeping, he proposed a pilot program to test the matter on a temporary basis. He’s working with others in his neighborhood. He’s engaging with local media to gain interest and support. He’s providing examples from other communities. While Strong Towns doesn’t have an official stance on backyard chicken keeping, We do celebrate the kind of bottom-up work Barker is engaging in, and I personally wish him luck and fortitude.
(Source: Small Houses Toolkit.)
Norm: I was invited to participate in the Gentle Density Local Leaders Summit that Small Housing BC hosted in Vancouver last week. The summit provided an opportunity for planners, advocates, and elected officials to hear from experts on accessory dwelling units (ADUs) of all shapes and sizes. It was clear that the question of “why” to build small is being answered in compelling ways and the summit showed that “how” to build small is another answered question that fewer people are cognizant of. I wrote about one such project in my city that was able to proceed while countless others are blocked. It inspired me to learn more, and that’s why I want to share Small Housing BC’s Small Houses Toolkit with you and hope you’ll read it, too.
Many people have come to understand the simple reality that our houses have become too large, over the last few decades. Their best evidence are the memories they have of growing up in—and seeing their parents and grandparents live in—much smaller houses where they lived lives as meaningful, if not more meaningful, more convenient, more comfortable and more affordable than we all live today in much bigger houses.
The move toward embracing smaller forms of housing is a neo-traditional movement. We’ve built these smaller homes before. We can build them today—better designed, more durable and more ecologically responsible.
(Source: Alex Gruber/Plough Magazine.)
John: One of my favorite things about the Strong Towns movement is that it’s one of the few remaining places where people from across the political spectrum can come together to work toward a shared vision of stronger, more resilient communities. For my own part, I don’t fit well within either major party. When someone asks me about my political leanings, I usually tell them I’m a “Wendell Berry agrarian,” or, simply, a “localist.” Over the last several years, I’ve been increasingly drawn to an economic philosophy with compelling ideas but an unfortunate name: Distributism. The Distributist movement was founded around the turn of the 20th century by Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton. Belloc and Chesterton were wary of both Big Business and Big Government; they celebrated instead the small, local, and decentralized. Put simply, Distributists believe the means of production should be “as widespread as possible rather than being concentrated in the hands of a few owners…or in the hands of state bureaucrats.”
As I said above, I’m drawn to Distributism but I wince at the term, which is easily conflated with redistribution. I’m not the only one who feels that way. In a recent essay in Plough Magazine, Dale Ahlquist reports that the Society of G.K. Chesterton recently renamed Distributism. The new name: Localism. The advantage of Localism, Ahlquist says, “is that it already has a recognizable meaning: the support of local production and consumption of goods; local control of government; promotion of local history, local culture, and local identity; and the protection of local freedom.” Whether this strategy really is an advantage when trying to spread an economic philosophy, only time will tell. (I have my doubts.) But I’m all-in on empowering the Local. “Our society can be transformed from the bottom up, through a grassroots revival,” writes Ahlquist. “It starts with people learning there is another option and that there are little things they can begin to do to change the world around them, the world within their reach…”
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Finally, from all of us, a warm welcome to the newest members of the Strong Towns movement: Evan Adams, Carlos O. Amezcua, Jacob Apenes, Scott Austin, Tristan Bassett, Mustafa Bayoumy, Craig Bazzi, Al Belmonte, Kurtis Bonano, David Braverman, Christopher Chang, Evan Cholerton, Daniel Cunningham, John Dalton, Phillip DeVries, Elise Diehl, Paul Dunahoo, Joel Eaton, Stephan Fraser, Matthew Grist, Dylan Hanes, Spencer Haugh, Caden Haustein, KT Henry, Jonathan Heuer, Joseph Hopfield, Jose Jimenez-Rubio, Chris Johnson, Mickie Kellum, Dan Kim, Jason Manuel, John Marvin, John McCaffrey, Crystal Mirabito, Nicolas Nadeau-Fredette, Lake Obiagu, John Raser, Colleen Roberts, Guy Roginson, Julia Schroeder, Juhwan Seo, Sandeep Singh, Delmar Stone, Hillary Takahashi, Brie & Nick Taralson, Greg Thivierge, Max Thomas, Daniel Tomicek, Todd Tregenza, Nicole Tucker, France Widmann, Kevin Wilkinson, and Theo Wolf.
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What stories got you thinking this week? Please share them in the comments!