This week Our Little Rock has been reading Strong Towns: A Bottom Up Revolution to Rebuilding American Prosperity. Our book club meet-up last night was our biggest yet. It’s inspiring to meet and talk with people across the city who notice things about how our city is designed that aren’t serving the people here. We reflected on how the book describes things we see in our own city —unsustainable development patterns of new shiny projects (wider roads, new housing developments, massive infrastructure projects, etc.) while we continue to have a backlog of unaddressed infrastructure maintenance, a decaying urban core, and a city that is constantly stretched for cash. All the while, our neighborhoods are becoming more divided by income levels and less safe for pedestrians.
Our group grappled with answering questions like: How can we encourage more mixed-income within neighborhoods? How can we take that into consideration the full cost of a new big development — including operations and maintenance — before breaking ground on something new?
If you haven’t read it yet, grab a copy and join us! The next book club will meet on Thursday, August 8 at 6pm at Community Bakery in SoMA. We’ll be reading the last five chapters with opportunity to reflect on the full book.
