These 4 Communities Are Leading the Way in Making Their Places Stronger

 

Six months ago, Strong Towns announced it was accepting applications for the Community Action Lab, a carefully customized, two-year relationship between Strong Towns and a select city seeking to make change. In other words, the Community Action Lab is designed to introduce Strong Towns ideas to your community, shift the conversation on a local level, and kickstart the implementation of a Strong Towns approach.

As Strong Towns Community Builder John Pattinson suggested in the initial announcement, the catalyst for this program was self-evident. “We meet them all the time: people who discover Strong Towns and compare the experience to blinders being removed,” he wrote. Some of these people are so energized by our messaging that they become advocates for the Strong Towns approach to building stronger, more resilient communities. “But as an organization we’ve never had a way of coming alongside these communities in a way that is rigorous, personalized, and sustained,” Pattinson admitted. That is, until we launched the Community Action Lab.

Today, we’re announcing the four communities hosting the inaugural Community Action Lab. 

Lake County, Florida

  • Population: 395,804  

  • Area: 1157 square miles

Chisholm, Minnesota

  • Population: 4,723  

  • Area: 4.7 square miles

Medicine Hat, Alberta

  • Population: 63,260  

  • Area: 43.3 square miles

Norman, Oklahoma

  • Population: 128,097  

  • Area: 189.2 square miles

Each of these communities consists of:

  • A Leadership Team, a group of policymakers and local leaders, such as elected officials and local non-profit presidents.

  • An Action Team, a group of 12 to 15 constituents from a diverse pool of professional experience.

“Action Teams,” explained Edward Erfurt, director of community action for Strong Towns, “receive ongoing training, support, and access to Strong Towns experts to help identify, articulate, and subsequently take on the most salient challenges and opportunities present in their communities.” They then work with the Leadership Team to champion and craft policy. 

The two-year program consists of five phases which take the constituent communities through education to implementation. “We’re not there to change anyone’s mind,” says Erfurt; “we’re interested in providing the resources and tools these communities need to affect change in a meaningful way.”

Additional information about the Community Action Lab, developments, and events can be found at strongtowns.org/cal.

 
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