Nationwide Strongest Town Contest finals feature Indiana, Ohio communities
Highlights:
• The Strongest Town Contest is a celebration of communities that are putting their focus on townmaking practices that build resilience and prosperity.
•The final round includes a live interview with Mayor Dean Vonderheide of Jasper, Indiana, and Norwood, Ohio's Alisha Loch, where they discuss how they are successfully applying the Strong Towns approach in their place.
• The 2022 Strongest Town will be visited by nationally recognized author, engineer, and advocate for strong communities Chuck Marohn. This city will also be featured prominently on the Strong Towns website with a series of articles outlining their efforts to provide citizens with a good life in a prosperous place.
• Voting is open to anyone.
• Full Contest Details / Press+Partner Kit
•The final round includes a live interview with Mayor Dean Vonderheide of Jasper, Indiana, and Norwood, Ohio's Alisha Loch, where they discuss how they are successfully applying the Strong Towns approach in their place.
• The 2022 Strongest Town will be visited by nationally recognized author, engineer, and advocate for strong communities Chuck Marohn. This city will also be featured prominently on the Strong Towns website with a series of articles outlining their efforts to provide citizens with a good life in a prosperous place.
• Voting is open to anyone.
• Full Contest Details / Press+Partner Kit
Voting to determine the strongest town in the United States will open following live broadcast of an interview with community members from this year's finalists: Norwood, Ohio and Jasper, Indiana. The broadcast begins at 3pm Monday, April 4 and will be posted to YouTube directly after.
Norwood comes to the table with a significant focus on great fiscal management. Like many U.S. communities, it has struggled with keeping finances stable and transparent, but in the past three years they've started to turn things around.
"Now we have effective budgeting and you can see them putting the money back into the community, and that's really making a difference," Alisha Loch, a local community development corporation board member, said in a recent episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution Podcast.
Norwood is also making new investments in walkability by reinvesting in storefronts and services within their 3.5 mile footprint.
It's really been a bottom-up revolution happening in Norwood.
Alisha Loch, board member for Norwood's Community Development Corporation
Darla Blazey, the community development and planning director for Jasper, talked on the podcast about how her community is enlivening old factory buildings with mixed-use redevelopment.
"Instead of expanding our community beyond corporate limits via annexing, we've been looking at infill projects," she explained. Diversifying the available housing in Jasper with multifamily structures, apartments, and more has also been a top priority for the community.
A contest for great townmaking
Communities across North America are seeking ways to make better use of public resources and serve residents. Those that are turning their attention to sound public finance, functional transportation systems, and responding to the needs of community members using bottom-up leadership are the focus of this contest.
The Strongest Town Contest launched in 2016 to spotlight communities that are leading the way to a better future. No place is perfect, and most of them are fighting against inertia from risky finance and wasteful development practices adopted after WWII. But the 16 communities selected to compete in the contest are pushing forward with a tried-and-true approach toward restoration, one that:
- Relies on incremental investments (little bets) instead of large, transformative projects
- Favors resiliency of result over efficiency of execution
- Is designed to adapt to feedback, to evolve over time to meet the changing needs of the community
- Is inspired by bottom-up action and not top-down systems
- Seeks to conduct as much of life as possible at a human scale
- Is obsessive about accounting for its revenues, expenses, assets and long-term liabilities
Strong Towns helps local leaders identify the cause of decline in our cities and take action to build a stronger, financially resilient future. The Strong Towns movement is reshaping the North American development pattern with a return to bottom-up, incremental growth.
For comment from Strong Towns, to connect with a town representative, or for more information about the contest, contact Lauren Fisher.
Find logos and promotional images here.
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Twitter: @strongtowns
Facebook: @strongtowns
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Past Winners:
2021 - Lockport, Illinois
2020 - Watertown, South Dakota
2019 - Pensacola, Florida
2018 - Muskegon, Michigan
2017 - Traverse City, Michigan
2016 - Carlisle, Pennsylvania
