We’re Not Small, and We’re Not Alone
Strong Towns advocates gather to hear Majora Carter speak at the National Gathering. (Source: ZED images.)
This May, Strong Towns held its first annual National Gathering in Charlotte, in conjunction with the annual Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). I had the pleasure of attending both.
I am a Strong Towns member and leader of an active Local Conversation group, Stronger Denton, in the city of Denton, Texas. I’ve been watching this movement grow for a few years now, so I was pretty excited before the National Gathering. Now that it’s over, I’m even more pumped, thanks to the momentum I witnessed.
Here are some of my takeaways:
Strong Towns is not small.
We had hundreds of attendees, from all over North America and from all walks of life and professional backgrounds. We are strong and engaged—and those who could come to the National Gathering are but a small minority of those taking action in their towns.
Keynote speaker Majora Carter held up a mirror to the values that brought so many of us together for the National Gathering. Her work embodies loving and building up your neighbors.
We are not alone.
Looking around at CNU, an event already in its 31st year, reaffirmed this for me. CNU is a broad community including many architects, planners, and developers, but they are bought into many of the policies sought by Strong Towns, and in truth started to seek some of those policies long ago. Strong Towns members are not alone, and are supported and admired by professional practitioners.
Strong Towns and CNU can complement each other.
What sets the Strong Towns movement apart is the emphasis on humility and patience preached by Jane Jacobs and others. At the same time, from the accumulated expertise at CNU, we can learn the pragmatism needed to bring about change in the world. At this year’s CNU, I got to learn from heroes of mine, including Eric Kronberg, Tim Corcoran, and, of course, Majora Carter. But we all fill our niche.
Strong Towns advocates at the National Gathering. (Source: ZED images.)
Professionals need to flip the script…
…from cautious policy allowance and bold development projects, to bold policy correction while being patient with small-bet developments.
Community lovers and activists, meanwhile, need to roll up their sleeves and do something.
Be practical and humble, but dream big. Together, we can precipitate the tipping point of public opinion to transform our towns before the Growth Ponzi Scheme bankrupts us all.
My understanding of the core of Strong Towns thinking has expanded:
Think long term.
Take small actions now and shorten feedback loops.
Allow incremental change everywhere.
Be humble. Allow what you think is bad in order to get what you think is good—the community will sort it out. (At least, once distorting subsidies are removed.)
There is a lot of work to do. But there are a lot of us to do it.
Thanks to all who came to the National Gathering for rejuvenating both my hope in the breadth of the Strong Towns movement. This year we had 500 attendees. But I know many of us feel the urgency that we need to scale from 500 to 50,000 quickly to help our beloved towns get back on a path of resilient solvency. Step one of that is each of us growing the movements in our town by 10x.
Loved the National Gathering? Couldn’t make it, but want to be part of the momentum? Look around you: this is your movement. Take a moment to become a Strong Towns member today.
Eric Pruett currently serves on the Planning & Zoning Commission in Denton, Texas. He and many others in Denton are working to make the college town more resilient, more affordable, and improve transit for all in an incremental way. As Rebekah Kik, assistant city manager in Kalamazoo, Michigan, said at CNU: “Incremental Everything.”