Friday Faves - Member Week Edition!
WOW, what a great week it’s been here at Strong Towns. If you haven’t heard, we’ve been celebrating our Member Week, where we talk about exciting new developments in the organization (namely, the unveiling of our new strategic plan) and thank our members for their continued support of the movement. If you haven’t yet, consider joining their ranks and becoming a Strong Towns member today!
Because we want to highlight our members this week, we thought we’d do a special rendition of the Friday Faves today. Instead of featuring our staff like usual, we’ve decided to share some of the many kind comments we’ve gotten from our members in the past few days.
(Also included are photos from this year’s Strongest Town Contest, which show people enjoying their communities and making them better, stronger places to live in!)
Without further ado, here’s what our members were saying this week:
Champaign, IL.
Jean Schwennesen: Having recently driven in some "crazy" traffic in Texas, it makes me truly appreciate this effort. Even in our VERY rural area, there are some bad highway spots (the "Straight-Away") that can be spooky during "shift change."
Robert Oakes: Strong Towns gives me hope.
Chris Robbins: Love your organization because it's not partisan.
Gabe Abatecola: Thanks for showing a growing UC Berkeley student in human geography that our crumbling towns and cities still have potential for revitalization. I am currently 3/4 of the way through Strong Towns and plan to start Confessions of a Recovering Engineer soon!
Durango, CO.
Korawich Kavee: I am actually from Thailand but now in the U.S. as a graduate student. As someone who is also interested in traffic engineering, it is good to see how the field of transportation is realizing how problematic car dependency really is; transport planning should be about mobility of humans, not cars.
Michael Schuller: I am becoming a member because the proposals for how to fix our cities from your organization are the most logical urban planning proposals I have ever seen. It is hard to argue with fiscal solvency and building with humans in mind.
Roger Henderson: Recently elected city council member and retired civil engineer... Happy to be part of the Strong Towns movement!
Bernie O'Donnell: I'm thrilled to join as a member of Strong Towns. I live in Black Diamond, Washington, and am on the City Council. Our small town character lives on through major developments, and my desire is to maintain that same strong town character as we grow.
White Salmon, WA.
Maureen Ganley: Been trying to figure out for many years how to enhance my community/city. Hopefully Strong Towns will at least be part of the answer.
Kirk Abolafia: Continue the fight!
Felicia Foster: I am reading the book and listening to the podcasts—very eye opening!! Thank you.
Danielle Richard: I'm embarrassed to admit that I thought I was already a member, but discovered I am not, so wanted to fix that right away. :) LOVE this organization and movement and am thankful for all that I've been able to learn from you guys over the past few years.
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Finally, from all of us, a big thanks to all of our newest members who joined during this week: Gabe Abatecola, Kirk Abolafia, Vincent Aguirre, Rory Aptekar, Alec Ball, Ash Barton, Sol Bassa, Tyler Bigler, Tyler Borrelli, Evan Bost, Jeffrey Boutte, Jamie Bright, George Brown, Michael Brown, Richard A Burg, Rohan Burnside, Jeffery Colvin, C.S. Coolidge, B Diane Davis, Ryan DeBarr, Matt DiPietro, Mayumi Doyama, Kurt Dresner, Jenni Easton, Stephanie Fanos, Felicia Foster, Benjamin Fuller, Maureen Ganley, Diane Garte, Linda Grenfell, Justin Gurr, Cheryl Hammond, Christopher Harris, Eva Hatziz, Jared Helmberger, Roger Henderson, Peter Herman, Matthew Iden, Anthony Isaacs, JoelRodney Johnson, Paul Johnson, Korawich Kavee, Michael Lofton, Luke Lorentz, Terrance Mc Ginn, Eleanor Ponomareff, Al Putnam, Danielle Richard, Athena Roberts, Evan Running, Christian Schick, Michael Schuller, Willow Sells, Paulette Shnier, Hannah Sillars, Eric Smith, Tristan Snyder, Jeffrey Starkweather, Angela Stathos, David Taylor, David Thompson, Kristine Thompson, Thi Truong, Nathan Ulsh, Katherine Waddell, Ryan Walters, Heliena Walton, and Alexander Whittle.