Strong Towns Hosts Competition to Find Successful, Resilient Communities
This month, Strong Towns, a national nonprofit working to strengthen financial resilience in America’s cities, towns and neighborhoods, is hosting a competition to determine the strongest town in America.
Teams of applicants (including government staff, citizen activists and nonprofit leaders) from across the country were invited to apply by answering a series of questions about their community, and 16 towns have now been selected to compete in a bracket-based competition to determine whose is the strongest. Towns are judged based on criteria like financial solvency, citizen engagement, transportation options and ability to adapt to new challenges. Learn more about Strong Towns principles here: www.strongtowns.org/mission.
From March 14-31 readers of the Strong Towns website will be invited to vote for the strongest town in daily bracket-based match ups, much like the NCAA’s March Madness tournament. First round voting will be based on answers to a short series of questions, and subsequent rounds will include photo essays, podcast recordings and a final webinar showdown for the championship.
The 16 towns selected for the initial competition are: Annapolis, MD; Boulder, CO; Carlisle, PA; Collingswood, NJ; Fargo, ND; Fort Atkinson, WI; Hays, KS; Hoboken, NJ; Holland, MI; Hopkins, MN; Pasadena, CA; Safety Harbor, FL; Sandusky, OH; San Marcos, TX; Truckee, CA; and West Palm Beach, FL.
Follow the competition at strongtowns.org/strongesttown
About Strong Towns:
Strong Towns is a national media organization whose mission is to advocate for a model of development that allows America's cities, towns and neighborhoods to grow financially strong and resilient. Strong Towns reaches an audience of more than 30,000 readers and listeners per month, and has over 1,000 members. Learn more at http://www.strongtowns.org
Here is the communication from Strong Towns:
Your town has been selected for the Strongest Town competition. Please notify your teammates. Thank you for applying; we're excited by the energy and enthusiasm this contest has generated and we're pleased to include your town among the competitors. I'm keeping this email as brief as possible but there is some important information below that could affect your participation in this contest, so please take note.
Here's how this is going to work: Each day this week, we’re publishing two blog posts with match-ups in the Sweet Sixteen. We’ll include the answers each town submitted for its initial application and give our readers (you included) the chance to vote between each match-up. We encourage you to tell your friends and and neighbors about this and get them voting too. On Friday, March 18, we’ll tally all your votes and come up with our Elite Eight.
If you're among those winners, we'll notify you then. At that point, you'll need to spring into action and email us 3-5 photos of your town in order to participate in the next step of the competition. If you'll be busy during the weekend of March 19-20, you may want to think about taking some photos now in case you are selected for the elite eight.
The other phases of this competition include a podcast recording with Chuck for the final four and a showdown webinar for the championship round. We'll keep you posted. In the meantime, we encourage you to share the attached press release about this contest with your local news outlets, government leaders and community organizations.