The Bottom-Up Revolution

Cities regularly ask residents for feedback, especially when budgets tighten or difficult tradeoffs approach. Norm and Mary Kate Norton look at what changes when people respond as an organized group instead of a collection of individual voices. They trace how Local Conversations grow from first meetings and small projects into groups that can communicate clearly, build relationships with public officials and take part in larger policy fights. A good idea may open the door, but organized local support gives it a better chance of surviving the meeting, carrying into the next discussion and becoming something the city can’t easily set aside.

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

Vacant commercial space can drag down a street, but Evan Snow sees something else: a chance to make room for local artists, small businesses, and community life. As co-founder of Zero Empty Spaces, Snow helps transform empty properties into affordable artist studios and cultural hubs. He explains why closed doors do not help property owners, downtowns, or neighborhoods, and why a temporary use can still give artists a lasting foothold outside the home studio. The model works because it keeps the first step small, giving artists affordable space while helping property owners show what a vacant storefront could become. Evan will also be speaking at the Civic Leader Summit in Pensacola, Florida later this year in October.

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

When Washington state asked which residents had access to frequent transit, it ran into a surprisingly basic problem: that question is hard to answer without knowing where sidewalks, crossings and curb ramps actually are. Dr. Anat Caspi, director of the Taskar Center for Accessible Technology at the University of Washington, joins the show to talk about Open Sidewalks, a project that helps communities map pedestrian infrastructure in a shared, usable format. Her team has mapped hundreds of thousands of sidewalks, and now residents can help add the local details that determine whether a route actually works in daily life.

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

Fayetteville, Arkansas, is growing fast, and housing is getting harder to build. Clark Eckels and Nathan McCloskey of Fayetteville Strong talk about Rethink the Lot, a tactical urbanism pop-up that turned downtown parking spaces into small-scale housing people could walk through. The housing and parking debate can easily get stuck in zoning language, council meetings, and abstract trade-offs, but this project gave people a physical way to understand what those rules mean on the ground. Clark and Nathan explain what residents worry about, why parking minimums matter, and what changed when people stood inside a home where a car would usually sit.

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

In New York City, the average rent is $4,700 a month and climbing. Over 500,000 housing violations are on file in the city, but the government database where they live is so outdated that most renters never see them. Farid Sofiyev, a sophomore and co-founder of Civic Reset NYC, built an interactive map of 40,000 of those violations and published the names of the 25 worst landlords in the city. This episode gets into how the map works, what the data reveals about NYC's rent crisis, and the zoning choices that got the city there.

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

Van Buren, Maine, had a problem no town wants: it owned more than half of its downtown buildings through tax acquisition. When Luke Dyer became town manager after a long career in law enforcement, he was facing vacant storefronts, deteriorating buildings, flood-damaged land, and a downtown that had lost traffic after the port of entry moved away from Main Street. In this episode, Dyer shares how Van Buren began putting buildings back into productive use, turning an underused ice rink into pickleball courts, growing trees for Main Street in a community greenhouse, and converting its old town office into a business incubator. Luke is also a graduate of the Strong Towns Cohort Program and applications are now open for the 2026-2027 class.

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

Horry County, South Carolina has grown so fast that the median household can no longer afford the median home. Dylan Thompson has lived there his whole life, and he's running for county council because he thinks the people making decisions about that growth should actually be accountable to the people living through it. He's a former pastor running under the Forward Party, focused on flooding, housing, and development policy, and making the case that those issues don't have to break along party lines; they're the same things his neighbors on both sides of the aisle are worried about.

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Zoning reform matters, but Eric Kronberg says it is not enough on its own. Cities also need useful building types, realistic development math, better street design, thoughtful tax policy, and a clearer vision for what good neighborhoods can become. He and Tiffany explore why many cities say they want more housing but still make the most useful housing types illegal or impractical. They also talk about compact cottages, missing middle housing, Atlanta’s affordability challenges, and the overlooked power of a simple box, a good porch, and a house people can picture on their own block.

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

Before Strong Towns became a national movement, its ideas spread through conversations, conferences, friendships and people willing to make room for a difficult message. For Member Week, Norm talks with Founders Circle member Paddy Steinschneider about watching Chuck Marohn’s work gain traction and why the movement has always depended on more than one voice. Paddy reflects on the role members can play when a community realizes its streets, budgets, infrastructure or public life are not working. He describes Strong Towns members not as a strike force, but as people with a toolkit: ready to help when a community realizes its streets, budgets, infrastructure or public life are not working.

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

Nate Hood was the first person to donate to Strong Towns, back when the movement was still a blog, an irregular podcast, and a small circle of people asking better questions about cities. Norm Van Eeden Petersman talks with him about the early days of Strong Towns, the ideas that first made the movement feel different, and what has changed as those ideas have spread across North America. This is a story about growth, but also about why the movement’s power still comes from people noticing what is broken nearby and doing the next small thing.

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