The Bottom-Up Revolution

The people closest to your home are often the people you know the least. Samira Reyes, a physician and creator of Samira Unscripted, wanted to see whether a low-pressure experiment could make that gap easier to cross. She invited neighbors into a group chat for small, practical help, and 16 people joined after she left 40 notes. Now she’s testing the idea with hundreds more people to see what actually helps strangers take that first step toward knowing the people next door.

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

The decisions that look simple at the start of a board game can become the problems you spend the rest of it trying to solve. Nick Shrag, a video game programmer and board-game designer, built 'People Live Here' around two players sharing responsibility for the same town. One manages local government finances and development, while the other represents the community and the way people move through what gets built. Players have to work together as roads expand, highway subsidies shape development, and earlier decisions keep narrowing the options available later. Shrag is interested in games that do more than entertain as they can help people understand how real systems behave once those choices start piling up.

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

A house can take years to plan and build, but Andy Dragt and his wife can finish one in about five weeks. Norm Van Eeden Petersman joins Firefly Tiny Homes founder Andy Dragt, whose work has moved far beyond the tiny-house lifestyle people often see on HGTV or social media. Built for permanent living and movable when circumstances change, these homes can serve as a starter home while giving people more flexibility about where that home sits over time. They offer something the housing system has struggled to produce: a small, attainable home for people trying to get started.

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

Allendale had already lost much of its population after one freeway cut through the neighborhood, and another highway project threatened to deepen the damage. Planner and architect Kim Mitchell first came into the fight thinking his professional role was to bring answers, but listening to residents changed how he understood the work. In 2012, he helped form a “learning and doing” group that still meets more than a decade later, building trust and civic capacity through repeated action. More than a decade later, Mitchell sees the trust and civic capacity built through that process as inseparable from the neighborhood’s continued ability to organize.

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

Memphis is the deadliest metro area in the country for people walking, with 5.5 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 residents. Sheridan Harris nearly lost her life in a hit-and-run while training for a triathlon three years ago, and she is still working toward getting back to the riding she loved before the crash. Since then, she has become part of My Green Line Project, which is collecting firsthand accounts from dangerous crossings across Memphis, including places residents say have needed attention for years. Her own intersection still has not been changed, but My Green Line Project keeps doing the work anyway, gathering residents’ stories and pressing for safer crossings whether officials recognize the problem or not.

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

Getting involved in your city doesn’t have to feel like homework. Margaret Allen works at a bank and is part of Strong Des Moines, where meetings feel less like formal civic duty and more like a group of people genuinely excited about figuring things out together. That atmosphere has pulled her deeper into city budgets, council meetings, and conversations she once would have tuned out. It has also made the group more willing to borrow good ideas from elsewhere, including Strong Towns Chicago’s improv series, as they find their own ways to make local issues easier to talk about and more fun to be part of.

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

A small house in the backyard can solve a housing problem that changes several times over the life of a family. It might first give an aging parent a place nearby, then become a home for an adult child, a rental, or eventually a place for the homeowners themselves. Bradley Jones, founder of Tiny Homes of Tucson, has seen that flexibility become one of the biggest reasons families decide to build ADUs. In central Tucson, many older homes sit on deep lots with little more than dirt, a cactus, and room to spare, which gives families a chance to turn unused backyard space into housing that can keep adapting as their needs change.

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

Daniel Basubas thought New Zealand would feel very different from the sprawling Southern California communities where he grew up. Instead, he found many of the same development patterns and many of the same arguments over parking, bike lanes, and who streets are for. In Dunedin, he now helps lead the Urbanerds Ōtepoti Dunedin, a Strong Towns Local Conversation that meets at the local pub. The group gives people a low-pressure way to talk through those issues, meet others who care about the city, and get more comfortable participating in local decisions, whether that means commenting on a council plan or speaking at a public meeting.

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

A lot in Fairfax, Virginia, sat empty for 25 years, long enough that neighbors barely noticed it anymore. Oren Falkowitz, founder of Area 2 Farms, sees places like that as potential farms. He joins urban planner Jeffery Tompkins to talk about bringing food production back into neighborhoods using vacant lots, overlooked buildings, and other spaces conventional development often passes over. Their Urban Farms Toolkit tackles one of the biggest obstacles: zoning rules written for a very different kind of agriculture. For vacant parcels that may never attract conventional development, a farm can give the land a role in the neighborhood again.

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.

Floating homes are already common in parts of Europe, and Jeff Kraatz thinks North American cities could use the same idea to create entirely new neighborhoods on the water. The founder of Floating Towns explains what it actually takes to move beyond a few individual houseboats and build a community of 50 or 60 homes. The homes may float, but the harder work still happens on land: planning, approvals, infrastructure, affordability, and getting local leaders on board. With miles of waterfront sitting largely unused, Kraatz sees room for cities to grow in a direction they rarely consider.

This podcast is made possible by Strong Towns members. Thank you! Join fellow members discussing this episode in The Commons.