The Bottom-Up Revolution

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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A developer can check every box for parks and shared spaces and still create a place nobody wants to spend time in. Colby Cox has seen stormwater ponds, tiny playgrounds, and generic amenity packages counted as community space even when they do very little to bring different people together or give them a reason to stay. Norm Van Eeden Petersman talks with the Convergence Communities founder about what changes when those spaces are designed around actual human activity: kids playing, teenagers hanging out, people eating, exercising, gathering, and simply being around one another. A park can occupy the right number of acres, but what makes it feel alive enough that people actually choose to be there?

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When Calgary’s main water feeder line broke for the second time in two years, Nathan Hawryluk decided he needed to get more involved. He already had an unusual view of the city’s finances as a planning commissioner, where questions about new neighborhoods and the infrastructure needed to support them regularly cross his desk. Norm talks with Nathan about the “bad Goldilocks spot” behind those numbers, where the city’s obligations and the revenue available to meet them have drifted apart. As Nathan puts it, “Our taxes are too high for people to pay comfortably and too low to actually do the job.”

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What if an extra bedroom could make housing more affordable for a student while helping an older adult stay in their home? Alison Donnally founded Joey Co. to pair students looking for housing with older adults who have space to spare and could use help with everyday tasks. Students pay rent, earn money back through agreed-upon work, and gain a different kind of connection to the community around them. Donnally talks about what makes these matches work, why home sharing is still unusual in the U.S., and what this model reveals about how many housing options we’ve left off the table.

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Near El Morro, one of Puerto Rico’s most recognizable historic sites, a government road project called for cutting down 26 mature trees, widening a road, adding a roundabout, and turning part of a grassy area into parking. Giancarlo Gonzalez, an Old San Juan resident and founding member of a Strong Towns Local Conversation in San Juan, explains how neighbors discovered the plan and began asking why it was needed at all. Their petition has drawn more than 8,000 signatures, pulled the National Park Service into the fight, and forced new scrutiny of a project residents say was moving forward without their input.

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After moving to Chattanooga, Lisa hit three potholes in three years and ended up buying five new tires. She knew people elsewhere had taken pothole repairs into their own hands, and as a mosaic artist, she already had the materials to try her own version. Soon, bright smiley faces started appearing in Chattanooga’s streets. They attracted attention from drivers, neighbors, and eventually the city itself, raising questions about safety, public space, and what happens when one resident decides to fix something in her own strange, joyful way. Now Lisa keeps stacks of smileys in her car, ready for the next pothole that could use a little silliness.

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When Arec Ligon moved to Brownsburg, Indiana, he was frustrated by how few places nearby seemed worth lingering in. That frustration became Linger, a growing map of user-submitted third places across the country. Instead of ranking businesses, the site asks different questions: Is this place welcoming? Can people stay without spending much? Is the walk there actually comfortable? Arec built Linger around contributions from people who know these places firsthand which lets the map capture qualities a search engine usually misses, including the local stories that explain why people keep coming back.

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