What do Local Conversations do?

In some ways, Local Conversations are where the rubber meets the road of the Strong Towns movement. Local Conversations are Strong Towns in real life.

But what do Local Conversations do? 

Local Conversations meet regularly in-person (typically once a month) to talk about Strong Towns ideas and how they relate to their town or city. Yet as a Local Conversation matures it starts to put those ideas into action too. The ways Local Conversations take action varies widely from one place and one group to the next.

Every year, we conduct a survey of Local Conversations to get an update on what they are doing and what we, as an organization, can do to help them be successful. What we hear in that survey is that the issues these groups are tackling locally, and how they are addressing them, is as diverse as the communities themselves.

Here are some of the issues being addressed at the local level, based on our survey:

• Making streets safer and more productive
• Making their communities more bikeable and walkable
• Expanding housing options by advocating for small-scale developers, missing middle housing, ADUs, and more
• Improving and expanding public transit
• Ending parking mandates and subsidies
• Making city finances more accessible and more transparent
• Fighting highway and road expansions
• Improving and expanding parks, public spaces, and local tree canopies
• Getting involved in economic development efforts
• And more…

And here are some of the ways these groups are working together to take action, again based on a recent survey:

• Speaking up at city council meetings, planning commission meetings, and other local government meetings
• Meeting with city officials, small business owners, local leaders, local advocates, etc.
• Supporting the work of other like-minded organizations in their area
• Appearing in the local media (op-eds, radio and TV interviews, etc.)
• Creating hyperlocal blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos
• Doing tactical urbanism projects
• Organizing events
• Organizing neighborhood walks and community bike rides
• Conducting value-per-acre analyses
• Creating or supporting public art
• Doing public engagement
• Helping to get Local Conversation remembers elected to local office or appointed to local commissions
• Hosting Q&A sessions with candidates for local office
• And much more…

There is a virtuous cycle that comes from taking action. The city, and the Local Conversation, are strengthened together.