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Strong Towns

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 episode features a Strong Towns advocate who is making positive change in their community.

The Bottom-Up Revolution

In most suburban neighborhoods, a corner store or small commercial space can feel years away, even when residents want places to gather and local businesses need somewhere to begin. Rather than wait for a zoning change, Lauren Penn worked with a neighbor to turn their front yards into a tiny market with a baker, a coffee roaster, artists, children selling handmade goods, and people who might not otherwise have met. The project grew out of her interest in the “missing middle” of local economies: the space between an idea at home and a full commercial lease. For parents, especially mothers, markets like this can offer a realistic way to test a business idea and earn income during a season of life that does not fit neatly into a standard work schedule.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

 • Lauren Penn (
Site • , 
LinkedIn • )

Stronger Denton • (Site)

Stronger Neighborhoods • (Site)

Pop-Up Market Makers • (Site)

How One Front Yard Became a Neighborhood Pop Up • (Bottom-Up Short)

 • Local Recommendations:
‍ • 

Thai Ocha
L’Amitié Bistro
Two Gentleman of Verona Gelato
North Lakes Park
 • 

Tiffany Owens Reed • (Instagram)

 • Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest?
 Let us know here!

 

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

Can a Front Yard Bring the Village Back?

Andrew Price spent nine years living without a car in Hoboken, New Jersey, where most daily trips could be handled on foot or by transit. Once he bought a car, even routine outings came with a new calculation: where he would park, how much it would cost, and whether driving was actually the easier option. An early Strong Towns member, Price examined places, non-places, and the difference between fine-grained and coarse-grained urbanism in articles. He reflects on how owning a car made him a stronger urbanist, a realization that connects back to his first years in Arkansas, where lawns, roads, and parking lots filled the landscape, but finding a place to sit outside with lunch still meant getting back in the car.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

 • Andrew Price (
Blog • , 
LinkedIn • , 
X [Twitter] • )

Places and Non-Places • and 
Fine-Grained vs. Coarse-Grained Urbanism • by Andrew Price (Articles)

Norm Van Eeden Petersman • (LinkedIn)

 • Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? 
Let us know here.

 

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

Car Ownership Versus the Promise of Convenience

Modern family life offers mothers an endless supply of services meant to make isolation more manageable, but Lauren Penn began wondering why so much support had to be purchased in the first place. After a violent crash near the crosswalk her children use to get to school pushed her into local activism, she began connecting unsafe streets and missing sidewalks to the exhaustion many mothers experience while coordinating transportation, childcare and social life largely on their own. Lauren shares how books, advocacy and small experiments with her daughters changed what she thought a neighborhood could provide. A place can either force every need into another private transaction or make room for families to help one another.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Lauren Penn • (LinkedIn)

Stronger Denton • (Site)

Stronger Neighborhoods • (Site)

Pop-Up Market Makers
How One Front Yard Became a Neighborhood Pop Up • (Bottom-Up Short)

Tiffany Owens Reed • (Instagram)

 • Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest?
 Let us know here!

 

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

Where Did the Village Go?

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.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Mary Kate Norton • (LinkedIn)

Strong Towns Local Conversations • (Map)

Norm Van Eeden Petersman • (LinkedIn)

 • Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? 
Let us know here.

 

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

Your City Said It Wants Public Input, Now What?

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.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Evan Snow • (LinkedIn)

Zero Empty Spaces • (Site)

 • Local Recommendations:
‍ • 

Yellow Green Farmer’s Market
Bike Trail
Krakatao Indonesian food
 • 

Tiffany Owens Reed • (Instagram)

 • Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest?
 Let us know here!

 

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

The Vacancy Problem Artists Can Help Solve

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.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Dr. Anat Caspi • (LinkedIn)

Open Sidewalks Connect Map • (Map)

Norm Van Eeden Petersman • (LinkedIn)

 • Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? 
Let us know here.

 

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

Can Your City Answer This Sidewalk Question?

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.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Clark Eckels • and 
Nathan McCloskey • (LinkedIn)

 • Fayetteville Strong (
Site • , 
Instagram • , 
Youtube Video • )

 • Local Recommendations:
‍ • 

Word Coffee
Crisis Brewing
Fossil Cove Brewing
Hugos
Hammontrees
Fayetteville Public Library
Razorback Greenway
 • 

Tiffany Owens Reed • (Instagram)

 • Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest?
 Let us know here!

 

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

Could These Parking Spaces Be Homes?

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.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Farid Safiyev • and 
Angelo Mazza • (LinkedIn)

 • Civic Reset (
Site • , 
Instagram • , 
Podcast • )

Courtyard Urbanism: The Best of Both City and Suburb • with Dr. Alicia Pederson (Podcast)

Norm Van Eeden Petersman • (LinkedIn)

 • Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? 
Let us know here.

 

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

A Student-Built Map Exposing New York's Worst Landlords

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.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Luke Dyer • (LinkedIn)

 • Local Recommendations:
‍ • 

Acadian Village
Tasty Food Restaurant
Northern Maine Kolache
York's Kitchen
 • 

Tiffany Owens Reed • (Instagram)

 • Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest?
 Let us know here!

 

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

What Pickleball Revealed in a Rural Town

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.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

 • Dylan Thompson (
Facebook • , 
Site • )

Norm Van Eeden Petersman • (LinkedIn)

 • Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest? 
Let us know here.

 

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

Running for Office Without a Political Background

Eli Smith, director of the Faith-Based Housing Initiative, joins the show to talk about churches turning underused land and aging buildings into housing and everyday community spaces. He explains how his team helps congregations understand their property, imagine specific projects, and gain the language and tools they need to work with developers, lenders, and local officials. Eli and Tiffany dig into the tension between commuter churches and a more rooted parish model, and why thoughtful design often leads congregations beyond a standard apartment block toward pocket neighborhoods and shared spaces.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

Eli Smith • (LinkedIn)

Faith-Based Housing Initiative • (Site)

What I've learned from faith-based housing • (Substack)

 • Local Recommendations:
‍ • 

The Franklin Inn
Scoop
 • 

Tiffany Owens Reed • (Instagram)

 • Do you know someone who would make for a great Bottom-Up Revolution guest?
 Let us know here!

 

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

Building Community On Church Land Again

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