Strong WA

"Strong towns" are generally:

• financially resilient.

• built incrementally, not all at once.

• accessible for all, by foot, wheelchair, bike, transit, car, and truck.

• where one is able to meet their routine needs locally, without driving.

• where social connections are strong.

• where bottom-up civic and economic participation is enabled and encouraged.

To achieve this, a strong town must:

• be financially solvent to ensure long-term prosperity and resilience.

• stop betting its future on huge irreversible projects, and start taking small, incremental steps and iterating based on what we learn.

• stop fearing change, and start embracing a process of continuous  adaptation.

• stop building our world based on abstract theories, and start building it based on how our places actually work and what our neighbors actually need today.

• stop obsessing about future growth, and start obsessing about our future financial obligations.

Neighborhoods of strong towns are:

• not exempt from change.

• not subject to sudden, radical change.

• scaled for humans.

Strong towns cannot happen without strong citizens.

People of strong towns are:

• people who care.

• part of the solution.

• not customers of the government, but rather are cooperative participants in creating a better place.

Local governments of strong towns should: 

• be a platform for citizens to collaboratively build a prosperous place.

• not be for local implementation of higher-level policy.

• leverage its land as the base resource from which community prosperity is built and sustained.

• build transportation systems as a means of creating prosperity in a community, not an end unto itself.

The thumbnail photo above left is at Palafox Pl and E Intendencia St in Pensacola, FL--winner of the 2019 Strongest Town Contest.

The modern American pattern of sprawling low-intensity development (and restricting it from increasing in intensity) is a stark divergence from the traditional incremental development pattern that had been proven over centuries of human civilization. As these cities age, some start to realize their precarious financial position. It has already bankrupted some of the first cities that followed this pattern of development.

The cost to maintain the infrastructure and services to support sprawling low-productivity land use exceeds the tax revenue it creates. To become financially sustainable and resilient, cities need to (1) constrain the expansion of infrastructure such that it can be sustained by the intensity of development that financially supports it and (2) nurture the incremental infill of productive places for people  such that it can adequately fund the maintenance of the infrastructure that supports it.

A harmful pattern we see is higher levels of government subsidizing expansion of local infrastructure in areas that are not expected to achieve the level of investment (and the resulting tax base) to support its future maintenance, repair, and replacement of infrastructure. 

As described by Strong Towns, "The way we build our cities now squanders precious resources that should be used to make our communities more prosperous...

"We are trading short-term growth for long-term liabilities,
and it's slowly bankrupting us."

...We all inherited the development pattern invented by Americans in the last century. Most consider it normal, the way things are done, despite how radical an experiment it is. It’s only human to justify the pain and instability this new approach has caused, to focus on the symptoms, because an alternative is too difficult to imagine."

Strong Towns is an organization rooted in local action. Therefore, local action is our organization's focus, despite being organized at the state-wide level.

Specifically, Strong Towns of Washington State actively:

1. nurtures civil and thoughtful bottom-up conversations rooted in sound economic principles and a vision for broadly-shared prosperity, and which lead to local action to help people where they struggle.

2. connects local leaders across the state to share resources, learnings, and strategies.

Our activity primarily occurs within our Discord server and monthly online meetups.

In the future, we also intend to advocate for systemic changes in Olympia to nurture incremental adaptation that promotes broadly-shared prosperity in every community across the state.

(The image at the left of this section is from a meetup of our local conversation in Kirkland.)

What state policies prevent our communities from being stronger and more financially resilient? We'd love for you to share your ideas with our group about your insights on this topic. But here are some that we find particularly interesting...

Spencer Gardner (planning director for the City of Spokane since 2022) wrote a 3-article series on this topic:

• When should the state jump in to address local problems?

• Annexation vs. Speculation

• Planning for a balance of land use vs. services

As Gardner and Marohn explain in those articles, we expect the state to establish a system that brings cities toward solutions by tuning the economic incentives to be aligned with the well-being of communities and their people, rather than establishing more top-down mandates that attempt (and generally fail) to adequately solve the complex challenges facing our communities.

Want to learn more about our ideas? Take a look at our Policy Concepts under development.

(Want more details? Ask rodney@strongwa.org.)

These are just a few ideas illustrating how changes in state policy could help our fragile cities become stronger. What's your idea?

The thumbnail photo at the left of this section's header is a view of Kirkland's Rose Hill, looking east along NE 85th St near I-405, in an area that is being planned for a major interchange rebuild including direct ramps to high-occupancy/toll lanes and a BRT (bus rapid transit) station. Current land uses have been oriented toward generating sales tax revenue rather, but it is expected to shift in coming years to become a more valuable  place for people.

Would you like to help? Here's how to get involved...

1. Sign up in the "Join us" form, below.

2. Join the Strong WA Discord Server for live chat in a wide array of channels with others inspired by Strong Towns across WA.

3. Join the StrongWA-announce email announcement group to receive our latest updates via email.

4. Join the StrongWA-discuss email discussion group to engage in conversations with Strong Towns organizers across the state via email.

5. Join or a local conversation near you! (Don't see one listed? We'd love to help you start your own.)

To grow this movement across Washington State, we need your help to:

• share your local challenges with us,

• share your ideas with us, and

• share StrongWA.org with others across our state.

With your help, we to build an coordinated organization of ears, eyes, and hands across the state that will:

• listen and learn about the challenges facing our cities and towns,

• collaboratively create a financial model that enables financially resilient cities and towns, and

• reach out to our legislative representatives as needed to achieve our goals.

(This effort needs to be coordinated--please let us know if you would like to help.)

Furthermore, we need people who would like to help:

• illustrate our vision more clearly with graphics, photos, and videos

• research and discuss policy ideas

• analyze data, including in geographic information systems (GIS)

• write articles and posts for blogs and social media

Rodney Rutherford has followed Strong Towns throughout his many years as a community organizer, incrementally strengthening neighborhoods along the way.

In the mid-2000s while living in Seattle, Rodney was struck by the frustrations of commuters stuck in traffic and volunteered on projects that would ensure easier mobility for all, most notably serving with the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board until he moved to Kirkland in 2008.

Rodney is a systems engineer: he loves to learn how systems work, how they fail, and how they can be improved to better serve people. Professionally, he's worked on a variety of information systems at Google Kirkland since 2007, and now leads a small team of engineers. Outside work, Rodney loves to improve the systems that impact our communities. 

In 2010, Rodney served on his neighborhood association board for eight of these years. Seeking to strengthen social ties in the neighborhood, Rodney established The Neighbor Project in 2012, a donation-based self-serve espresso cart in his neighborhood. Since then, Rodney has volunteered at that same site as a weekly host at the Safe Parking Program, providing homeless women and families a safe place to sleep in their cars. This experience inspired him to raise awareness of housing models that can better meet the changing needs of his community.  Inspired by this, he co-founded Liveable Kirkland to collaboratively envision places for everyone in his community, while also advancing the sustainability and quality of Kirkland's neighborhoods. He also represented neighborhoods on Kirkland’s Housing Strategy Plan Advisory Group in 2017, and influenced the update of neighborhood plans in 2018. He's served on Kirkland's Planning Commission since October 2019.

Rodney has resided in Kirkland’s Rose Hill with his wife and two kids since 2008, and has always lived within four miles of Lake Washington.