Check out Strong Towns. They’re a policy advocacy group that’s focused on helping people influence policy at the local level to make their towns livable again. I’m a part of my local strong towns group, and they’re absolutely great. We’re getting the ball rolling, organizing with other local activist groups, meeting with local politicians to understand our local challenges better, and all while receiving a lot of support from the mother ship organization. Meanwhile, our town isn’t some metropolis, it’s only 90,000 people.
If that isn’t your thing, just start going to city council or county board of supervisor meetings and start making public comments there. It’s a good way to meet with other policy advocates in your community and start networking with them.
Ah. Well, the problem is that we’ve made building new housing units nearly impossible through decades of unforced errors at the local level in nearly all of our cities, as well as bullshit ass zoning. It’s not even remotely impossible to undo, but a lot of people don’t recognize it as the root of the problem. Again, check out Strong Towns, we’re working to walk these errors back and make our cities places that are built for people again.
With regards to zoning, nobody in their right mind is asking to let DuPont put a rocket fuel factory next to an elementary school. Many zoning codes have really terrible and not evidence based practices codified, such as enforcing single family housing sprawl, ensuring that you MUST drive to go buy a loaf of bread, and requiring outrageous parking requirements often 2-3x over what’s needed in practice.
Thanks, I’ll look and see if theres a local chapter in my area. Ive been meaning to get more involved in local politics, its just hard to find a comfortable group of people to get in with in my experience. Would love to find out I can actually join people in something meaningful :)
Yeah, do it! Speaking from personal experience, it can be a little scary at first, but it’s not even a tenth as bad as you think. It’s actually a surprisingly social experience.
You are not required to be a member to start a chapter, and from all that I’ve seen, they’re very supportive of you send an email asking for guidance. I would start by going to local city councils or board of supervisor meetings, put flyers up at the library and small coffee shops or anywhere else you can put up flyers, and start holding regular meetings at least once a month
Stop making it a life-goal to go 1.5 million dollars in debt to own a stucco home in a vast ocean of identical stucco homes and maybe buy some property by a small town and sacrifice the luxury of convenience and being able to get doordash whenever you want and instead have a little garden or something.
If the market decided that living in suburban hell wasn’t profitable anymore, they would stop paving over vast tracts of land to unroll a sea of terracotta roofs as far as you can see like a rolling ocean of crippling debt and HOA fines.
sacrifice the luxury of convenience and being able to get doordash whenever you want
Not necessary. I live in Manhattan and the street canyons are full of doordasher ebikes, and grocery store isles are jammed with instacarter trailer carts which they then hitch up to more ebikes.
The world is changing and so can yours. Ten years ago tourists were always shooting videos of people biking to work. Today it’s (somewhat) normal to them. Look at Paris.
hwo do I get to walkable city and live there
Check out Strong Towns. They’re a policy advocacy group that’s focused on helping people influence policy at the local level to make their towns livable again. I’m a part of my local strong towns group, and they’re absolutely great. We’re getting the ball rolling, organizing with other local activist groups, meeting with local politicians to understand our local challenges better, and all while receiving a lot of support from the mother ship organization. Meanwhile, our town isn’t some metropolis, it’s only 90,000 people.
If that isn’t your thing, just start going to city council or county board of supervisor meetings and start making public comments there. It’s a good way to meet with other policy advocates in your community and start networking with them.
Walking.
that solves the first part if I walk for like 4 days, but how do I live there short of being homeless?
I was going to type out a reply, but conditional_soup already said everything worth saying.
Ah. Well, the problem is that we’ve made building new housing units nearly impossible through decades of unforced errors at the local level in nearly all of our cities, as well as bullshit ass zoning. It’s not even remotely impossible to undo, but a lot of people don’t recognize it as the root of the problem. Again, check out Strong Towns, we’re working to walk these errors back and make our cities places that are built for people again.
Thanks, I’ll look and see if theres a local chapter in my area. Ive been meaning to get more involved in local politics, its just hard to find a comfortable group of people to get in with in my experience. Would love to find out I can actually join people in something meaningful :)
Yeah, do it! Speaking from personal experience, it can be a little scary at first, but it’s not even a tenth as bad as you think. It’s actually a surprisingly social experience.
Do you know anything about starting a local chapter? The closest one to me is 2 hours away :(
https://actionlab.strongtowns.org/hc/en-us/categories/360004233911-Local-Conversations
You are not required to be a member to start a chapter, and from all that I’ve seen, they’re very supportive of you send an email asking for guidance. I would start by going to local city councils or board of supervisor meetings, put flyers up at the library and small coffee shops or anywhere else you can put up flyers, and start holding regular meetings at least once a month
Just have to be European. Live on the south coast in the UK and life is so easy here.
Stop making it a life-goal to go 1.5 million dollars in debt to own a stucco home in a vast ocean of identical stucco homes and maybe buy some property by a small town and sacrifice the luxury of convenience and being able to get doordash whenever you want and instead have a little garden or something.
If the market decided that living in suburban hell wasn’t profitable anymore, they would stop paving over vast tracts of land to unroll a sea of terracotta roofs as far as you can see like a rolling ocean of crippling debt and HOA fines.
you dont have to assume the worst all the time fella. this is lemmy, not twitter.
Not necessary. I live in Manhattan and the street canyons are full of doordasher ebikes, and grocery store isles are jammed with instacarter trailer carts which they then hitch up to more ebikes.
The world is changing and so can yours. Ten years ago tourists were always shooting videos of people biking to work. Today it’s (somewhat) normal to them. Look at Paris.