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PODCAST

The Bottom-Up Revolution

The Bottom-Up Revolution features the stories of the Strong Towns movement in action. Hosted by Tiffany Owens Reed and Norm Van Eeden Petersman, it"s all about how regular people have stepped up to make their communities more economically resilient, and how others can implement these ideas in their own places. We’ll talk about taking concrete action steps, connecting with fellow advocates to build power, and surviving the bumps along the way—all in the pursuit of creating stronger towns. Each

society & culture

All Episodes

36:29

Spencer Gardner: Moving from Planning to Action

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/09/01

Spencer Gardner is an urban planner and Strong Towns member who moved to Spokane, Washington, a few years back because it offered him and his family an affordable place to live, where they found a traditional neighborhood they could walk and bike in. Since that move, however, the city—like so many across the U.S.—has become increasingly unaffordable and Spencer has stepped up to help try and change that. An opening in city leadership led him to apply to be Spokane’s planning director and he was

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28:01

Lindsey Meek: An Engineer who ”Saw the Light”

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/08/25

Today’s guest on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast has been a supporting member of Strong Towns for 10 years! Lindsey Meek’s story will be familiar to some of you, especially those in the city-building professions. Years back, she was an engineer doing some of the typical projects that many civil engineers end up doing these days: building suburban subdivisions. Somewhere along the way, she encountered Strong Towns and especially the now famous video, “Conversation with an Engineer.” As she describes

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29:48

Amy Stelly: Campaigning to Get Rid of an Urban Highway

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/08/18

Urban highways are ubiquitous in pretty much every city across America. They cut through neighborhoods, make navigation challenging, decrease property values, and bring exhaust and noise into our communities. But they also help people move quickly from one end of the city to the other, which is why they were built in so many cities, especially during the suburban boom of the 20th century, when they helped people travel from jobs in the city to homes in the suburbs. Today, there’s a movement to stop

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42:55

Steph and Sean Tuff: Starting an Electric Bike Company

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/08/11

Podcast host and Strong Towns Program Director Rachel Quednau has been eyeing electric bikes for some time now, and, while she hasn’t made the leap to purchase one herself just yet, she loves seeing the growth of this industry and the possibilities it opens up for people to have better, cheaper transportation options beyond cars. Stephanie and Sean Tuff also started seeing that possibility a few years ago and they turned that into a new electric bike business. A few years back, Steph and Sean

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31:01

Danny Schaible: Creating a Street Design Team

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/07/28

Today’s guest hails from Hyattsville, Maryland, a growing inner ring suburb of Washington, DC. Danny Schaible is a city councilperson, a Strong Towns member, and the founder of the Hyattsville Street Design Team. We know you’re going to want to hear more about that last one especially! Schaible has a degree in landscape architecture and spent years working for the National Park Service. He brings that love of public space and awareness of design issues to his leadership in the Hyattsville City

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28:01

Ari Feinsmith: Helping More People Get Out and Bike!

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/07/21

A Strong Towns approach is all about seeing the challenges in your city and taking that next smallest step to start addressing them. Today’s guest on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, Strong Towns member Ari Feinsmith, exemplifies that spirit. When he started biking to college (about a 15-minute ride from his house in Sunnyvale, California), he quickly realized how dangerous and challenging it was just to get from point A to point B without a car. So, Ari began attending public meetings and

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34:48

Montavius Jones: Celebrating Your City and Helping it...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/07/14

Montavius Jones is a Strong Towns member who describes himself as “getting radicalized” about urban planning issues on Twitter. (This conversation is actually a good argument for the positive potential of Twitter as a place to meet people, connect and share ideas!) Jones majored in commercial real estate in college, and brings that expertise to his work today at a community development financial institution, as well as a lot of on-the-ground advocacy in Milwaukee. A few years ago, he also had the

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38:40

Jen Stromsten and Alex Beck: Welcoming New Americans...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/06/30

If you live in a small town, grew up in one, or just have a rural community that’s close to your heart, you’ve probably heard things like, “Young people don’t stay in this community,” or “After the plant closed, we’ve been losing population.” When people leave and no one comes to replace them in smaller towns, businesses shut down, schools are half-empty, open positions can’t be filled, and even basic services are a struggle to cover with declining property taxes. It’s a downward spiral. Today’s

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25:10

Jonathan Curth: Ending Parking Minimums and Seeing...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/06/23

A few weeks ago, we announced a series of five core campaigns we’re going to be focusing on over the next few years at Strong Towns, including ending highway expansion, encouraging transparent local accounting, advocating for safe and productive streets, legalizing incremental housing development, and ending parking minimums. None of these are new issues for us, but we’ll be placing a special focus on them and providing a ton of resources and action steps you all can take in your cities to make

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27:20

Ann Zadeh: Community Design for Stronger Towns

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/06/16

On last week’s episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, we heard from two inspiring Strong Towns members, Nick and Amanda Lanata, and this week we’ve got another member story for you. A brief plug: If you didn’t get a chance to become a supporting member during Member Week last week, there’s still time. Join the movement and join incredible people like Nick, Amanda, and today’s guest, Ann Zadeh. Zadeh has been a part of the Strong Towns movement as a member for more than six years. During

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32:32

Nick and Amanda Lanata: Two Amazing Strong Towns Members

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/06/09

Welcome to a special Member Week episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, featuring two amazing Strong Towns members: Nick and Amanda Lanata, from Zachary, Louisiana. Nick is a data scientist and Amanda works for the Louisiana Main Street program, and also helps run a small family business. It probably won’t come as a surprise to hear that when this duo encountered Strong Towns, they were hooked and soon got involved. Nick was drawn to Strong Towns’ focus on doing the math and assessing the

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30:28

Beth Silverman: Uniting For-Profits and Nonprofits to...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/05/26

We’ve all heard the phrase “housing crisis” a thousand times these days. Many of us have been personally impacted by a lack of available housing, whether you’re a young person who has been hoping to buy your first home, but are totally unable to because of high costs and competition—or whether you’re someone who has experienced homelessness because of eviction, job loss, or any number of other reasons. There are a lot of people proposing solutions to this housing crisis and one of them is today’s

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32:03

Karla Theilen: A Neighborhood Storyteller

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/05/19

Today’s guest has built trails in the Grand Canyon, lived atop a tower as a forest fire lookout, and served as a traveling nurse. She’s also Strong Towns’ 2022 Neighborhood Storyteller, with weekly columns publishing every Tuesday, sharing about life in her neighborhoods and the small steps she’s taking to make them a little stronger. Karla Theilen lives in Missoula, Montana, but also spends time in other parts of the state through her nursing work, and visits Minnesota regularly, where she grew

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26:01

Cooper Frost: Incremental Change in a Small Town

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/05/12

There’s something special about Michigan. Two of our past seven Strongest Town Contest winners have come from the state (Muskegon and Traverse City), we hear inspiring stories from Michigan all the time, and we have some amazing, dedicated members doing good work in the Great Lakes state. Today’s guest is one of those people. Cooper Frost hails from Charlotte, Michigan, a rural community of about 10,000 people outside of Lansing. For a while, he had been absent from the town, but during the

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37:02

David Cantu and Maya Sanchez: Helping Neighbors Grow...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/05/05

Today’s guests are doing innovative agriculture work that is deeply rooted in history in their small town of San Elizario, Texas. David Cantu and Maya Sanchez are two local government leaders who have helped spearhead projects to encourage San Elizario residents to grow food for themselves and food to sell—all tailored to their unique desert environment. They’re tapping into historical knowledge of what plants grow best in these conditions and hoping other desert-dwellers can learn from this,

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31:16

Jay Stange: Slowing Down Cars and Building Up...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/04/28

Jay Stange is a former newspaper reporter, teacher, community organizer, and Alaska native. He’s also the Content Manager at Strong Towns. In this conversation, he’s talking about his efforts to slow down cars on busy stroads in both his former neighborhood in Anchorage, as well as his current neighborhood in West Hartford, Connecticut. Jay discusses the ways he’s worked with neighbors to push for the change, tested out temporary approaches, and addressed the concerns of business owners along the

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29:28

Carlos Alfaro and Jacob Pritchett: Reaching Across...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/04/21

It’s news to exactly no one that we’re living in polarized times. But Strong Towns advocates are doing their best to push back against polarization in their communities. In fact, it’s a core value of our movement that we work with people on all parts of the political spectrum, because we know that the change we seek across North America won’t happen without everyone on board. Today’s guests on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel Quednau, are doing the challenging but important work of

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35:37

Christa Theilen and Seairra Shepherd: Small-Scale...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/04/14

We have two special guests today: Strong Towns staff members Christa Theilen and Seairra Shepherd. Christa works as Strong Towns’ office assistant in our Brainerd, Minnesota, office and Seairra is a writer and multimedia creator based in central Illinois. But besides serving at Strong Towns, they both also work part time at local small-scale farms. Christa’s is a vegetable farm and Seairra’s, an animal farm. We invited them on the show to talk about their experiences in this vital industry: growing

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32:14

Robin Roemer: Stopping a Harmful Highway Project

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/04/07

A few years back, we published an op-ed from a Strong Towns reader who was fighting a proposed highway project in San Jose, California, near his child’s school—mere yards away, to be exact. The highway expansion would make a key crossing—where hundreds of children and parents walked to the school building every day—extremely dangerous. It would also bring noise and pollution into kids’ classrooms, strip recreational land away from the school, and, as with every highway expansion project, cost

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11:27

Strongest Town 2022: Jasper, IN

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2022/03/28

Welcome to a special Strongest Town contest episode, featuring a competitor in the Final Four round of our competition: Jasper, Indiana. Our guest is the Director of Community Development and Planning, Darla Blazey. You can learn more about the contest and vote in this match-up against Yellow Springs, Ohio, by visiting strongtowns.org/strongesttown.

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