Tiffany Owens is a Strong Towns member, guest contributor and member of the Strong Towns advisory board. She currently lives in Waco, Texas, but before that, she was going to school in New York City where she recently graduated from The Kings College.
In this conversation on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast hosted by Rachel Quednau, Tiffany talks about the trade-off between big-city excitement, and possibilities for connection and community that can sometimes come more easily in a smaller place.
Tiffany is deeply committed to understanding urban places and helping others to help shape their communities into stronger towns. She does this through her blog and Instagram account, Cities Decoded. And she’s also recently joined up with her local neighborhood association, so she shares the joys and challenges of neighborhood organizing. At the end of the day, Tiffany really wants to help people open their eyes, put down their phones and truly see their cities, to give real attention to the places and people around them
The interview concludes with a discussion about the power of religious communities and other sources of what Tiffany calls “associative culture”—something that’s becoming increasingly rare in this day and age. What is lost when we give up these places of connection?
Cities Decoded website and Instagram.
Read Strong Towns articles by Tiffany.
Preorder Confessions of a Recovering Engineer by Charles Marohn before September 8 to get access to our special “30 Days of Confessions” video series. (And catch a sneak peak of the series here.)
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Creating People-Oriented Places
Using Tactical Urbanism to Create Safer Streets
Fostering Creative (and Financially Resilient) Communities
Serving on a Citizen Advisory Committee
Partnering with Local Government to Create and Foster Ideas
Using Nonprofits to Build Strong Neighborhoods
Building Neighborhood-Boosting Community Groups
Using Local Food to Build Community
Building Community Through Public Art
Investing in Your Neighborhood
Fostering Collaboration on a Local Level
Reviving Forgotten Alleyways
Taking the Strong Towns Movement to School
Creating Healthy Communities
Adding Elements of Play to Your Neighborhood
Depaving Your Neighborhood
Proposing No Parking Minimums to Council
Starting a Neighborhood Grocery Co-Op
Reinventing the Rural Economy
Fostering a Local Music Scene
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