Why "Local"? Why "Conversation"?
Members of Strong Towns Milwaukee pose for a photo during a recent meetup. (Source: Strong Towns Milwaukee.)
Every month, all across North America, hundreds of Strong Towns advocates are gathering in local Strong Towns groups. They meet to talk about Strong Towns ideas, and then they work together to put those ideas into action in their towns and cities. Together, they are fighting highway expansions, leading the charge for parking reform, hosting forums for candidates for local office, creating and supporting third places, doing tactical urbanism projects, making their towns more bikeable, and much, much more.
As I write this, there are 185 of these groups across the United States and Canada, with more forming every single week. At the current rate of growth, there will be more than 1,000 local Strong Towns groups within four years. That will mean an estimated 10,000 Strong Towns advocates mobilizing every single month to build stronger and more financially resilient communities.
These groups are called Local Conversations. Not long ago, someone asked me about that name, “Local Conversation.” I had to be honest that I didn’t know its origins. I came on staff in 2019 and the terminology had already been in use for at least a year.
But I was able to lay out what the terminology Local Conversation means to me. And when you break it down, “Local Conversation” reveals a lot about the movement to build strong towns and cities.
Why Local?
First, why “local”? In other words, why focus so much attention on how we can effect change locally rather than in DC, or Ottawa, or even what is happening at the state level? Here are a few reasons:
The local is where we live. It’s in our day-to-day lives in the neighborhood that we (and our neighbors) experience most acutely the effects of decisions made about how we build and grow our communities.
Local government is a “collection of us.” Strong Towns advocates don’t see local government as the lowest rung on the government food chain, looking up the ladder for whatever scraps the state and federal governments deign to give us. Rather, the Strong Towns movement elevates local government as the highest level of collaboration for strong citizens working to build a prosperous place.
Strong countries need strong cities, towns, and neighborhoods. A nation of cities in decline can’t be strong for long. I’m reminded of a conversation I had with a Strong Towns member several years ago. Over the course of decades, because of his job, he’d witnessed the slow decline of a whole region of small Midwestern towns. They’d gone all-in at the same time on the Suburban Experiment. And now, together, they’d begun to slide as one toward insolvency. A country can’t be strong when it has thousands of towns and cities pursuing the same failed approach.
Everything you care about at the national level has a local analog. As we just saw, we can’t have a strong national economy without a nation of strong and dynamic local economies. Or, take the issue of climate change: If you’re passionate about addressing climate change, one of the best ways to take meaningful action on that issue is to help make your own community a strong town—more walkable and bikeable, less auto oriented, without so much wasteful and environmentally harmful parking lots and stroads, etc.
It’s at the local where you can best effect positive change, where you can have the biggest influence. On Election Night 2020, Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn wrote this:
Everything you are passionate about at the national level has a local analog that needs your attention. And not only does it need your attention, your passion and energy is game-changing. The time and effort you put into making your place stronger and more prosperous will make a huge difference in the lives of others. The result of those efforts won’t be ambiguous — show your place love and it will love you back. I promise.
You are the expert on your place. It’s possible that no one is coming to save your town or city…and if they do, it may not be the help you actually need. No outsider, however well-meaning, is going to know your neighborhood, town, city as well as you do.
The local level is more receptive to feedback. The Strong Towns approach is built on many small bets, learning from those experiments, and then adapting based on what we learn. Feedback at the state and federal level is dulled by distance and bureaucracy. Feedback at the local level can be felt and acted upon with greater speed and effectiveness. This principle is also at the heart of the Strong Towns 4-Step process, which many Local Conversations use when taking action together in their communities:
Step 1: Humbly observe where people around you are struggling.
Step 2: Identify the next smallest thing you can do to address that struggle.
Step 3: Do that thing. Do it right now.
Step 4: Repeat.
We need to show them how it’s done. Every place using a Strong Towns approach to build strength, prosperity and resilience from the bottom up—and working with neighbors across differences to do it—is a kind of demonstration plot for what we want (and need) for the whole country.
Why Conversation?
So that’s my answer to the question “Why Local?” But what about the “Conversations” part?
Conversation implies familiarity. I love etymology, and I was delighted to learn that our word “conversation” comes from a Middle English word that means “living among, familiarity, and intimacy.” Its Latin root means to “keep company with.” A Strong Towns local group happens at the ground level, over time, in familiar places, among neighbors. It builds on local knowledge and requires a process of continuous learning. Members of a Local Conversation “keep company” with one another, with their neighbors, and with the place they share.
Local Conversations is where people from all walks of life come together to work for the common good on common ground. By “common ground,” I don’t just mean areas of agreement, although it’s important to find that and build upon it. I also mean our literal common ground: the physical space we share as co-residents of the same town or city. I’m reminded of something my favorite writer, Wendell Berry, said: “A viable neighborhood is a community: and a viable community is made up of neighbors who cherish and protect what they have in common.”
Conversation implies relationships. One reason Local Conversation groups are arguably the greatest driver of change in the Strong Towns movement is because they are just that: groups. Why connect with others to work for change rather than just being a solo actor? For one thing, it’s more fun. For another, it’s more effective.
It is a lonely feeling to be the lone voice in a room—a city council session, perhaps—asking the unpopular question, challenging the status quo. But imagine if you’re not alone in that city council session, urging them not to take on that new budget-busting project. You’ve got the financial numbers on your side. You’ve got history on your side. In a kind of metaphysical way, you’ve got the whole Strong Towns movement on your side. But what if you had friends and colleagues literally at your side? It’s fun and energizing to be part of a group of people changing the world one block, one neighborhood, one city at a time.
It’s also more effective to work as a group than as a lone advocate. We have discovered this to be the single-most important factor in how successful someone’s advocacy is likely to be: Are they connected with others? This isn’t only our experience at Strong Towns—it’s borne out in research, as well. If you’d like to go deeper, we recommend the research of Hahrie Han, an associate professor of political science at Wellesley.
A Truly Bottom-Up Revolution
We sometimes describe the Strong Towns movement as a “bottom-up revolution.” It’s in the subtitle of Chuck’s first book. It’s also the name of one of our three podcasts. Here’s why I think Local Conversations are such an important part of that bottom-up revolution.
Local = “Bottom-up”
Conversation = “Revolution”
Local Conversations well up from the local. There is an effervescent energy to the work they are doing mobilizing their communities to become stronger, safer, more inviting, and more financially resilient.
They also know that the way to build enduring strength and resilience isn’t through orderly-but-dumb mandates imposed from on high, but rather through the chaotic-but-smart steps that emerge from below. The work of Local Conversations responds to the real needs of real people, and doesn’t put city budgets at risk, yet has the potential to ignite significant and lasting positive change.
Want to join that bottom-up revolution? Consider joining or starting a Local Conversation where you live.
John Pattison is the Community Builder for Strong Towns. In this role, he works with advocates in hundreds of communities as they start and lead local Strong Towns groups called Local Conversations. John is the author of two books, most recently Slow Church (IVP), which takes inspiration from Slow Food and the other Slow movements to help faith communities reimagine how they live life together in the neighborhood. He also co-hosts The Membership, a podcast inspired by the life and work of Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer, writer, and activist. John and his family live in Silverton, Oregon. You can connect with him on Twitter at @johnepattison.
Want to start a Local Conversation, or implement the Strong Towns approach in your community? Email John.