Since January, I’ve worked for Strong Towns, a non-profit education and advocacy organization committed to creating durable, fiscally sustainable and desirable communities. It started as a blog from Minnesota back in 2008. We are now an international movement with over 1,200 members and growing .
The Strong Towns Mission
Strong Towns is based on the premise that—for our countries to prosper—they must have financially strong and resilient cities, towns and neighborhoods. We believe that enduring prosperity cannot be artificially created from the outside but built from within, incrementally over time. This is achieved through focusing on developing strong, local communities—places where humanity’s creativity, compassion and spirit of collaboration can flourish.
Too often, our current approach to economic growth emphasizes investments in new infrastructure to serve or induce new development. This approach uses public dollars inefficiently, destructively subsidizes one type of development over another, and leaves massive maintenance liabilities to future generations. On the other hand, a Strong Towns approach emphasizes obtaining a higher return on existing infrastructure investments. Instead of disregarding old investments in favor of new, we focus on making better use of the infrastructure that we are already committed to keeping up.
These key messages of Strong Towns are explained more eloquently in this video:
Members Matter
This is a really important week for Strong Towns and our movement as we are in the midst of our summer member drive. We rely on the support of our members so that we can create quality, ad-free content and spread the Strong Towns message. Indeed 75% of our funding comes from membership dues and committed donors.
Our theory is that, if we continue to reach more people, two important things will happen. First, in cities around the continent, there will be more room in the conversation for Strong Towns thinking and those that want to put a Strong Towns approach into action. Second, as a result, more and more people who want to accelerate that change and they will support us financially.
Our goal is to engage a million people who care. That’s a million people who care enough about the Strong Towns message to share it with others. We know not all of them will become members, but we need the most motivated among you—those most dedicated to seeing change happen—to support us financially. Even a (relatively) small gesture of $25/year is a big vote of support for us and the movement.
A Personal Request
Now many of my readers will already be familiar with Strong Towns and our message. If that describes you, I urge you to considering joining, or making a donation this week. By becoming a member, you will add your support behind our movement.
If you are already a member. Thank-you! I now encourage you to help convince somebody you know to join our movement. It could be by changing your social media avatar for the rest of the week, sending your favorite Strong Towns article to a friend, sharing a recent video with your Twitter and Facebook contacts, or telling your co-workers about our podcast.
Thank-You
Thank-you for taking your time and reading through the post. I really appreciate it! If you have any question about Strong Towns, please don’t hesitate to send me an email at yuri@strongtowns.org.