Friday Faves - Your Weekly Strong Towns Roundup
Are you tired of national political divisions dominating the conversation when you’re trying to get things done locally? Well, good news: It is possible to find common ground around issues we all care about: fiscal solvency, better public spaces, food access, and more.
Learn more in our upcoming Local-Motive session, “How to Make Progress When Political Divisions Dominate.” You’re not going to want to miss this exciting discussion, coming up on March 3 at 1:00 p.m. ET.
Comment of the Week:
This comment came from the article “Blaming Drivers for the Mistakes of Traffic Engineers.” Check it out here to join in on the discussion!
Here’s what Strong Towns staff were up to this week:
(Source: Unsplash.)
John: Tim Soerens is a dear friend. As co-founder of the Parish Collective (a network of hundreds of neighborhood-rooted faith communities), the author of two books, and a conversation partner for more than 10 years, I also consider him to be a mentor. Tim wrote an excellent essay recently for Comment magazine on “two-pocket thinking,” the idea that it doesn’t matter how I obtained the money in one pocket, so long as I put a little of it in the other pocket to “do good” with. Tim draws on theology, his own experience as an investor in local businesses, as well as the brilliant work of folks like John McKnight and De’Amon Harges, to point us in a better direction: joining with neighbors to build a shared economy characterized by abundance, justice, and even “public joy.”
P.S. As a follow-up to this article, check out Chuck Marohn’s conversation with Tim Soerens on the Strong Towns podcast last month, and Rachel Quednau’s conversation with De’Amon Harges on our Bottom-Up Revolution podcast!
(Source: Unsplash.)
Jay: Calling ALL my fellow Infrastructure and Transportation nerds! Way back in November, Congress negotiated and passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure budget signed into law by the Biden Administration. Since then, everyone and their sister have put their personal spin on it, even down to what name we want to call it. Sometimes it’s the “BID” or “bipartisan infrastructure deal,” or maybe the “infrastructure law.” Its full name is the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). And however you interpret or filter it or criticize it or look forward to its spending manifestations, it now governs all federal transportation policy and funding through 2026.
Strong Towns hosted a Local Motive discussion last week with Beth Osborne, Director of Transportation for America, who helped clear up the transportation funding misconceptions and cut through the infrastructure hype. Her national nonprofit created a website where all your IIJA questions can be answered in one place. I’ve been nerding out on it all week.
(Source: TikTok.)
Seairra: Living in a small town, I find myself driving around quite a lot. Whether it’s to the grocery store or the next town over for a good meal at a favorite restaurant, I’ve wished for better public transportation. I’d give away highways in a second for a quick bullet train ride to the neighboring town. So when I discovered this TikTok on my nightly scroll, it gave me a pretty good laugh and I hope to pass that laugh onto you.
(Source: Unsplash.)
Rachel: The last few weeks have seen a flurry of articles in major news sources like the New York Times about troubling data showing an increase in traffic deaths and injuries. The problem is that these articles talk a lot about driver error and road rage, and they completely fail to discuss what we at Strong Towns know to be the major cause of so many car crashes: dangerous street design. Chuck and Abby discussed this on Upzoned this week, and Chuck also had an essay in Epsilon Theory on the subject. I was then heartened to see at least one major newspaper, The Boston Globe, addressing the increase in traffic deaths with a sincere conversation about how wide streets and auto-oriented design have led to tens of thousands of crashes in our cities every year. The op-ed, written by the Globe’s Editorial Board, starts by talking about the absurdity of fining people for jay-walking, but goes on to state that “we can’t punish our way to safer streets.”
“One better approach, one reflected in former Boston mayor Marty Walsh’s “Vision Zero” initiative, is to focus on road design itself.” It also offers some solid traffic calming suggestions. I apologize that the article may be behind a paywall for you, but it’s great to see voices in my former city standing up and recognizing a path forward for preventing future traffic fatalities—one that can really change things for the better instead of simply hand-wringing about “distracted drivers” or trying to solve the problem with enforcement after the fact.
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Finally, from all of us, a warm welcome to the newest members of the Strong Towns movement: Vanessa Aellen Piriz, Sebastian Ashkar, William Carson, Clayton Desser, Eric Green, Patrick Hammer, John Mayo-Smith, Mark McIntyre, Lisa Moody, Brendan New, Jayne Pietrowski, Suzanne Rhees, Pete Shoemaker, Matthew Tenney, and John Worlock.
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What stories got you thinking this week? Please share them in the comments!