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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

26:26

Ashley Salvador: Building Gentle Density and a...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/11/18

All week, we’ve been celebrating the thousands of amazing Strong Towns members who make up this movement. They are safe streets advocates in Hawaii and mayors in Pennsylvania and small business owners in Georgia. And if those references sound familiar, it’s because every one of those stories was featured on the podcast this year. If you’ve ever listened to the show and thought, “Wow I wish I could do what Mary or Chris or Haile is doing in my city,” you can! It just takes stepping up and committing

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27:59

Mason Thompson: Saying Yes to Your City

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/11/11

Mason Thompson is a Strong Towns member and city councilor in Bothell, WA. But he’s not someone who’s been dreaming of running for office since he was a kid or anything. For him, it all started because he wanted some bike trails in the local park. That led him to the park board, and eventually, to an elected official inviting him to think about running for office. Mason is someone who has said "yes" to his community; he’s been a lifelong resident of Bothell, and he’s dedicated to making it a better

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31:40

Tim Wright: Joining with Neighbors and Taking Action

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/11/04

Tim Wright is a long-time Strong Towns member and cofounder of a Strong Towns local group called ReForm Shreveport, based in Shreveport, Louisiana. Tim is an engineer who joined with some of his friends and neighbors to create this group out of a desire to make the best of the community’s assets, focus on the potential of Shreveport, and help young people like himself see that it’s a great place to live and stay. ReForm Shreveport has been very focused on action. They’ve cleaned up parks, piloted

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30:31

Rebecca Undem: Helping Small Towns and Their People...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/10/07

Rebecca Undem lives in the small community of Oakes, North Dakota, and does a lot of work helping her town grow stronger, and helping her fellow rural residents become community leaders. But we know her advice and insights will speak to you no matter if you live in a town of 2,000 or two million. In this conversation hosted by Rachel Quednau, Undem talks about the choice to stay in or return to your hometown; the connections, family, and traditions you get to experience when you make that sort of

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33:04

Rob Green: A Strong Towns Advocate and Mayor

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/09/30

On this week’s episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, we’re featuring a Strong Towns member and mayor of Cedar Falls, Iowa. In this interview with Rachel Quednau, Rob Green shares his journey from Coast Guard officer to neighborhood association president to mayor. He’s passionate about government transparency and accessibility—so much so that he held office hours in the local grocery store to meet with constituents. This discussion gets into the nitty gritty of updating some zoning codes

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22:05

Sarah Davis: Data-Driven, Community-Centered Planning

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/09/23

This week’s episode is a very special one because it features our summer intern, Sarah Davis, who just wrapped up her internship last week. She was a shared intern between Strong Towns and our friends at the data analytics firm, Urban3. (We heard from Cate Ryba, COO at Urban3, just a few weeks ago on this show.) Sarah was with us throughout the summer writing important stories that use the Strong Towns approach to development and finance, and make excellent use of Urban3’s extensive research and

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31:21

Austin Taylor: Using Tactical Urbanism to Make Your...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/09/16

This week’s guest on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast hails from Utah and he’s here to talk about a cool tactical urbanism program that is helping make streets safer with an incremental, resident-driven approach in Park City. Tactical urbanism is an approach to public space that involves making what we at Strong Towns like to call “small bets”: small, temporary projects that require little to no money to execute, which allow people to test out a new design in a public space. It might be a

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29:00

Chuck Marohn: Taking a Strong Towns Approach to...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/09/09

Making his debut on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, hosted by Rachel Quednau, this week’s guest is Chuck Marohn. He’s on the show talking about his new book, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town, which just came out yesterday. In this conversation, Chuck talks about what got him motivated to write this book and why productive, resilient transportation is such an essential piece of a strong town. He shares some personal stories about transportation challenges

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35:34

Cate Ryba: Connecting Neighbors and Harnessing the...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/09/02

Cate Ryba is Chief Operating Officer and Planner at Urban3, a data analytics firm that Strong Towns has been partnering with for years. In this conversation, Cate talks about the important work of Urban3, which helps cities understand their municipal finances and take charge of their financial future through powerful visualizations. But the episode also features a conversation on Cate’s previous role as the youngest city councilor in her hometown of Spartanburg, South Carolina, her experience

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36:46

Tiffany Owens: Paying Attention to Your City

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/08/26

Tiffany Owens is a Strong Towns member, guest contributor and member of the Strong Towns advisory board. She currently lives in Waco, Texas, but before that, she was going to school in New York City where she recently graduated from The Kings College. In this conversation on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast hosted by Rachel Quednau, Tiffany talks about the trade-off between big-city excitement, and possibilities for connection and community that can sometimes come more easily in a smaller

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34:54

Thomas Dougherty: Turning Alleys into Productive Space

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/08/19

Today’s story is about alleys, specifically, how much potential and possibility they hold. While they’re typically just used as a place to park your car or stick your trash cans, alleys are also a space where kids can safely play, where flowers can grow, and, perhaps, where new homes can be built. That’s how Thomas Dougherty sees it. Dougherty grew up on a farm in Ohio, where he developed an early appreciation for, as he says, “getting his hands dirty,” and being a builder. Later in life he had

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35:31

Wendy Streit: Using Public Art to Help Small Businesses

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/08/12

Lockport, Illinois—a suburb of Chicago—won our annual Strongest Town Contest this year, and we’re doing a special week of content right now to celebrate their win and explore some challenges the city is facing. One genuinely fun and compelling story that we heard about from Lockport involves rubber duckies. Huge, people-sized rubber ducky statues, actually. During the pandemic in 2020, leaders and residents in Lockport were watching local businesses struggle to stay open as activity downtown

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36:22

Mary Jones: Taking Matters Into Her Own Hands to...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/08/05

The story featured in today’s episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast is truly the definition of the Strong Towns movement in action. It starts with a Strong Towns member recognizing a problem in her community and then working tirelessly, persistently over a period of years to solve it. Mary Moriarty Jones is a native Hawaiian who lives in Honolulu. Her background is in civil engineering and real estate development, but she’s also a mom to five kids, and that’s really where this story starts

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33:19

Jenifer Acosta: Giving New Life to Historic Buildings...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/07/29

“Incremental development” is a term you might’ve heard if you’ve been following Strong Towns for a little while. This concept refers to small-scale projects like updating downtown commercial spaces or renovating duplexes; the main thing is that these projects are led by individuals or teams of local residents, not huge companies. So, encouraging and allowing incremental development is one of the single biggest things a city can do if it wants to become a strong town. Not only does this increase

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31:43

Lauren Fisher: Building Family and Community Resilience

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/07/22

Lauren Fisher grew up in Alaska—both in the city and in a very remote, fly-in only region. Today she lives in rural Wisconsin on a burgeoning homestead with her husband. She has a dog, a cat, several rabbits and chickens, and will hopefully have goats or a cow very soon. Lauren is dedicated to building up household resilience, which, for her family, means trying to develop more and more food options that they can raise, grow, forage, and hunt themselves. But she’ll also be the first to tell you

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26:15

Ilana Preuss: Saving Downtown with Small-Scale...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/07/15

When you’ve got a friend or family member visiting you from out of town, where do you take that person? After you’ve said your hellos and they’ve dropped off their bags, where is the fun place you head to show them what your community is all about? Is it, by chance, a brewery, or the farmers market stand with the homemade cheese and sausage, or maybe it’s a cute jewelry shop on main street that makes all their own stuff… There’s something about a locally-crafted food or good that just instills in

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22:17

Michael Kelley: Making Cities More Bike- and...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/07/08

Michael Kelley is the Director of Policy at BikeWalkKC, an advocacy organization based in Kansas City, Missouri. Their mission is to “redefine our streets as places for people to build a culture of active living.” Michael sees biking and walking as tools that enable people to get where they need to go in a safe, affordable, independent manner. These active transportation options can improve economic resilience, health, and a sense of community in any town, and Michael is working towards that in

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31:20

Nick Meyer: Shining a Spotlight on the Good That's...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/06/29

Nick Meyer started Volume One magazine when he was fresh out of college as a way to help show his fellow citizens of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the life and vitality happening all around them. Now, 20 years later, the publication has grown tremendously, and expanded into a retail space, cohost, and creator of many local events, and an all-around supporter of the Eau Claire community. Eau Claire, like so many places across America, has experienced a decline in economic activity and local pride after

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36:31

Haile McCollum: Small Business Owner and Community...

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/06/24

Strong Towns member Haile McCollum is a successful small business owner, creative, and leader in her town of Thomasville, Georgia. In this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast, host Rachel Quednau talks with Haile about her ongoing dedication to her town through a number of activities and positions, especially local boards. We hear about Haile’s design firm, Fontaine Maury, which has, among other things, helped local businesses to sharpen their brand identity and make their mark in the

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31:48

John Simmerman: Building Active Towns

The Bottom-Up Revolution ·

2021/06/17

Strong Towns member John Simmerman cares deeply about community health and wellbeing, and founded the organization Active Towns to help cities think about and create more opportunities for physical activity within neighborhoods. But he wasn’t always an activist. For much of his career, John was in charge of developing wellness programs and fitness centers for large corporations. He brings that insight and experience into his Active Towns work today, creating podcasts, articles, and videos—plus

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