Communities

America Should Sprawl? Not If We Want Strong Towns

July 21, 2025 Charles Marohn, Resilience. Create! Communities, Housing, Sprawl, Sustainability, Urban Design

There’s been a lot of buzz around Conor Dougherty’s recent New York Times piece, “Why America Should Sprawl.” The article argues that the country’s housing crisis is so severe—and infill development so insufficient—that we need to embrace aggressive outward expansion of our metro regions, what many would call sprawl, to build the millions of homes America needs. It’s a compelling, well-written piece, and it’s struck a chord with a lot of readers. But from a Strong Towns perspective, the core argument is fatally flawed. Because sprawl doesn’t solve the underlying problem. It is the underlying problem.

As Fires Consumed California, Small Towns Organized Their Own Defense

July 14, 2025 Margaret Elysia Garcia, Truthout. Organize! California, Communities, Extreme weather, Mutual Aid, Public safety, Wildfires

If you live in a national forest in California, odds are pretty high that at some point or another you’ve been ordered to evacuate. In Indian Valley, for the first twelve days, many of our residents did indeed evacuate, but a significant number stayed behind. Some residents had livestock to look after and often no solid indication of where they could take their animals that wouldn’t also need to be evacuated soon. With so many towns evacuating at once, some didn’t want to stay in evacuation shelters where the lights would be on all day and night and the likelihood of catching COVID was high.

DC Rallies In Support Of Butler Family At Neighborhood Cookout

May 17, 2025 Fight Back! News. Organize! Communities, Police abuse, Racism, Washington DC

Washington, DC – Over 100 community members and organizers from the DC Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (DCAARPR) gathered on Saturday in Ward 8 to enjoy a cookout in support of the Butler Family. The cookout, hosted by the DC Alliance, featured activities for the kids (such as a bounce house), along with music, dancing, games and plenty of food. The DC Alliance organized the event to support five defendants – Ronald Butler, Donte Butler Sr., Donte Butler Jr., Frederick Simms and Jermaine Irving Jr. – all family members, who were brutally attacked by Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers in an incident that underscores the racist violence embedded in policing.

Build Inspiring Alternatives To Counter Authoritarianism

May 16, 2025 Barbara Peterson, Waging Nonviolence. Create! climate crisis, Communities, Education, Energy, Food Security, Health Care, Housing, Science and technology

We are heading down a perilous road. Vulnerable communities face growing threats. The climate crisis is outpacing scientists’ worst predictions. Authoritarianism is no longer a distant possibility — it is rising, with democracy backsliding across the globe. With Trump’s return, public services like education, labor protections, humane immigration policies, health care and diversity programs are being dismantled. Meanwhile, trust in democracy is eroding — especially among young people. As political scientist Steven Levitsky points out, part of the problem is motivational: The political right is fighting for a clear, albeit dangerous, vision. The left, by contrast, is often fighting against that vision, with fewer compelling alternatives on offer.

Beyond Community Currencies: Strengthening Your Local Economy

March 28, 2025 Alex Lopez, Resilience. Create! Communities, Energy, Local Economy, Renewable Energy, Renewable Energy Communities (REC)

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in Renewable Energy Communities (REC), legal entities that collectively manage energy, promoting economic, social, and environmental benefits for their community. This model of citizen management over an essential resource has been widely accepted — so could a similar principle be applied to money? Ekhilur, a nonprofit citizen cooperative, is pioneering an innovative approach to strengthening the local economy. Instead of creating a new currency, it operates its own payment system — regulated by the Bank of Spain — to maximize the circulation of the existing euro within the community for as long as possible.

New Study: Highways Block Social Connection

March 16, 2025 Eliana Perozo, Next City. Educate! Communities, health, Highways, Urban Design

A new study confirms what urban residents and advocates have known for decades: that America’s urban highways are barriers to social connection. The research, published this month in the journal PNAS, quantifies for the first time how highways have disrupted neighborhoods across the 50 biggest U.S. cities. Every single city studied showed less social connectivity between neighborhoods where highways are present. “Nobody could put a number on the disruption, and now we can give a score to every single highway segment,” says Luca Aiello, a professor at the IT University of Copenhagen and the study’s lead author.

Political And Climate Storms Rolling In

November 18, 2024 Patrick Mazza, Resilience. Strategize! climate crisis, Communities, Political crisis, Transformation

Never has it been more important to build strong places capable of weathering the storms barreling down on us, both the physical storms of a disrupted climate and the political, social and economic storms of a nation and world tumbling into increasing conflict. Never has it been more crucial to strengthen and build the community networks and institutions that promote human solidarity. Donald Trump’s election to his second presidential term sends that message loud and clear. Though things weren’t exactly going great before the election.

How To Build An Ecological Economy

October 30, 2024 Patrick Mazza, Resilience. Create! Communities, Community, De-growth, Food Security, Green Economy

This is the second part of a scenario for how a city comes together to address the multiple economic, social and environmental crises facing our world. The first part of the scenario is here. It covers how the city creates basic frameworks of life. How it gains control of its own finances and local economy through creating a public bank. How it ensures everyone has shelter through creation of social and community housing. How clean energy is supplied while energy use is reduced through creation of community energy cooperatives. In this part, the scenario will cover how the city develops the basics of an ecological economy not dependent on endless economic growth.

The Search For Green Common Ground

October 17, 2024 Emmett Hopkins, In These Times. Organize! Communities, Electric Vehicles, Green Transition, Lithium, Transportation, Worker Rights and Jobs

Last fall, indigenous organizers in northern Chile walked the perimeter of vast salt flats, in a region where multinational mining companies control lithium evaporation ponds and other mineral extraction operations that have been documented to inflict damage against local peoples’ sacred and life-sustaining lands. Five thousand miles to the north, auto workers in Michigan prepared to walk off the job at noon to demand, in addition to decent pay and working conditions, the inclusion of workers at the companies’ expanding electric vehicle (EV) and battery operations.

We Need A Culture-In-All-Policies Approach To Democracy

September 1, 2024 Jeremy Liu and John K. C. Liu, Next City. Strategize! Art, Communities, culture, Democracy

Culture, unlike democracy, is self-propelled and self-propagating: it is persistent, in ways that democracy strives to be; it is effusive in ways that democracy should be; it is practical, as democracy must always be; and it is critical, in ways democracy is too often not. In these ways, culture’s strength and importance to civic life is that it runs through everything; it is the warp to democracy’s weft. The growing recognition of Indigenous wisdom about place and its management are important to acknowledge in any discussion of place-based work. The “new” ideas of regenerative and permaculture agriculture can draw a lineage to Indigenous wisdom, for example.

Making Our Communities What They Need To Be

July 15, 2024 Steve Early, Resilience. Organize! Communities, Democracy, Infrastructure, Unions, Vermont, Water

The symbols of public-sector infrastructure are often associated with urban areas: major highways and subway systems, for instance; bridges and tunnels; large ports and airports; billions of gallons of fresh water to deliver and hundreds of tons of solid waste to cart away every day. Yet public works departments are no less important in rural areas, where municipal employees and their families, whether members of the National Education Association, the Firefighters union, or the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Workers (AFSCME), are dependent on the same community services they provide. In Middlebury, Vermont, the largest town in rural Addison County, 46-year-old Jeremy Rathbun is one of those public servants.

Social Currencies In Prosumer Communities And Networks

June 19, 2024 Roberto Spano, Resilience. Create! Anti-capitalism, Bartering, Communities, New Economy, Social Currencies

This practice consists of creating a community of prosumers who exchange products and services, creating a process of eco-social regeneration around the local economy, thanks to the exchange facilitator that is social currency. It serves to regenerate the local economy and local communities, to weave trust in the act of consumption, to weave the economy around local production and the real needs of communities and finally to support productive processes that are regenerative for the ecosystemic environment. In the communities and networks, different ways of exchange and social currencies are practised:

Democratizing Universities Would Supercharge Pro-Palestine Divestment

June 12, 2024 Akin Olla, Waging Nonviolence. Strategize! Communities, Democracy, Divestment, Higher Education, Israel, Palestine, Universities

The pro-Palestinian divestment movement has erupted across the country, after over a decade of bubbling and stirring under the guidance of organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine. Students have built encampments, led walkouts and passed student government resolutions demanding that their universities cease investing their endowments in companies that uphold Israel’s genocidal apartheid system. Some student governments have even passed resolutions preventing their own budgets from being used to benefit Israel’s regime in any way. University of California Davis was the first to do so, blocking off its $20 million budget from genocide-supporting companies.

The Benefits Of Indivisible Reserves And Their Connection To Communities

May 28, 2024 Bruce J. Reynolds, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Capital, Communities, Cooperative Principles, Cooperatives

The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) issued a restatement of cooperative principles in 1995 that included the idea of indivisible reserves in its third principle as a discretionary option for cooperatives. When cooperatives build financial reserves, they may specify a certain share or all of it as indivisible, in other words, not transferrable to members. For cooperatives with indivisible reserves, closures of these businesses or acquisitions by private investors, would result in transfers of these designated capital funds to other cooperatives or to organizations supporting their communities. The ICA’s inclusion of indivisible reserves has an implicit connection to its seventh principle, Concern for Community.

There’s A Better Way To Make Communities Safer

April 4, 2024 Mel Duncan, Waging Nonviolence. Create! Communities, Community Safety, Nonviolence, Peaceforce

Over the past 25 years, as co-creator of Nonviolent Peaceforce, I have seen unarmed civilian protection (also known as UCP or UCP/A to include the methodology of accompaniment) evolve to the point where our teams have worked alongside local communities using evidenced-based, civilian-led approaches to prevent violence and protect civilians in 15 countries. In helping to foster a community of practice, I have witnessed dozens of small and large organizations using active nonviolent methods to create community safety. Here are three examples I find to be particularly inspiring.

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