STANDING STRONG — Jacob Hyman, second from left, Strong Towns Steubenville local conversation leader, poses with STS core team members at their informational table during the Eighties Night First Friday festival. From left: Kevin Bernetsky, Hyman, Shannon Monroe with three-week-old Josephine and Paul Monroe. -- Christopher Dacanay

STEUBENVILLE — The city of Steubenville, still grappling with economic fallout from the steel industry’s departure, has seen individuals and organizations from all backgrounds uniting to revitalize the once-booming city. Now, a new group of individuals is throwing its hat into the revitalization ring, seeking to help Steubenville find its true identity.

Strong Towns Steubenville is a recently formed group that seeks to revitalize the city through certain principles laid out by the national nonprofit organization Strong Towns. The STS core team consists of between eight and 10 volunteer Steubenville residents, but it seeks to engage with the community at large to discuss Strong Towns principles and work to implement them in a way that uniquely suits Steubenville.

“It is open to however the local people in the community want to take it,” said Jacob Hyman, with Strong Towns Steubenville. “There isn’t much direction besides that we’re talking about these things and trying to enact the principles.”

Hyman is the leader of the Strong Towns Steubenville local conversation. Hyman defined a local conversation as an autonomous group, officially recognized by the Strong Towns nonprofit, made up of at least three people that have met once or more to discuss enacting Strong Towns principles in their respective city.

Strong Towns itself was founded by Charles Marohn, an American author, land use planner and civil engineer. While working as a transportation engineer, Hyman said, Marohn noticed the cities he was working on “were consistently in debt” and did not have the finances to maintain the new infrastructure.

“(Marohn) really started to question, ‘How did this happen? How did American cities get broke?’ Hyman said. “What he started to uncover is it’s not simply a financial brokenness that dominates American cities, but we have communal brokenness, familial brokenness (and) spiritual brokenness.”

Marohn began writing his ideas about infrastructure in a blog in 2008, Hyman said. The ideas gained traction and eventually became the basis of Strong Towns, the national nonprofit that primarily functions as a media advocacy organization, promoting ideas through various mediums such as podcasts, vlogs, one-on-one consulting and a national conference.

Hyman himself is a graduate from Florida State University, where he studied civil engineering. For some of electives, Hyman said, he took urban planning courses that “blew the lid open” for his urban planning passion.

“I eat, sleep and breathe these things,” said Hyman, who now works full-time as a civil engineer.

While doing research for his university studies, Hyman said he searched online for modern discussions on planning topics. That is how he became familiar with Strong Towns resources, which he would casually listen to and read.

“I always wanted to live out the principles that they spoke of,” Hyman said, “but it wasn’t … until moving to Steubenville a little over two years ago that I saw … a community that I wanted to plant roots in, and I was able to, gradually and progressively, move from ideas of Strong Towns Principles — ‘How do we live them out?’ — to the reality of ‘How do we live in Steubenville, particularly?'”

Hyman, an Air Force veteran, said he was able to attend a Strong Towns national conference. He chose Steubenville because he found other people there who shared his desire to be rooted in a place and share “rooted community.”

Now, Hyman is making moves to bring the local conversation into the city’s conversations, most notably with a few soon-approaching events. On Wednesday, STS will hold its first community conversation at Froehlich’s Classic Corner at 7:30 p.m. Hyman said individuals can attend the event with no prior experience and join discussions “about what you want to see done to make Steubenville a strong town.”

Another event is Cycle the City on Saturday at 9 a.m. The event, a community bike ride loosely following the Steubenville Heritage Trail, is being organized by STS, the Jefferson County General Health District and the Harmonium Project.

Although the manner in which Steubenville residents want to enact Strong Town principles is up for discussion, the principles themselves are clearly established in the “Strong Towns Strategic Plan.”

Steubenville does not have much development occurring in general, Hyman said, but new development should be pursued with Strong Towns’ approach, as described in the strategic plan. One of the approaches, Hyman noted, is relying on incremental development — “little bets” — rather than large projects.

“For Strong Towns, what that looks like is empowering local developers,” said Hyman, adding that large projects like the Fort Steuben Mall are typically not able to sustain themselves. “You don’t need to build 50 houses all at once. How about build three? … How can you empower local citizens to be able to develop, construct and own a house that they’re then able to sell to a family who needs it or provide dignified renting?”

Hyman said the core idea of STS’s work is creating a town that “is good that it exists for itself,” uncovering and embracing its own identity and history.

“(Strong Towns’ principles are) trying to help Steubenville be what it wants to be,” Hyman said, “which, it seems to me, is a place of healthy industry, commerce, a place that is good to raise a family with great recreation, but, at the same time, not trying to create these things in the way that everywhere else creates them.”

In regard to Steubenville’s identity, Hyman said some of STS’s core team members in charge of civic and neighborhood pride programs have already begun researching the city’s neighborhoods and their history. The hope, Hyman said, is to work with Steubenville City Council to create signs for each neighborhood that help people to know and take pride in their local history.

Other efforts STS hopes to break ground in include increasing the transparency of local finance and helping citizens to comprehend topics such as zoning and ordinances for a better-informed, “human-centered” Steubenville.

Hyman said of STS’s efforts, “It’s going to take the people. … Local conversations are only as strong as the people involved.”

The majority of STS’s core team does not have a background in civil engineering or urban planning, Hyman said. Rather, they all share a love for the city and a desire to see it flourish.

Among STS’s core team are Paul and Shannon Monroe, who moved to Steubenville from Connecticut two months ago. Paul Monroe, who plans to open his Spyridon Studios pottery studio at 189 N. Fourth Street, said they moved to Steubenville because it is a place they could find community and make a difference.

Shannon Monroe, who is remotely finishing her doctoral degree in archaeology, said, “We’re thinking about what we want the rest of our lives to look like, and we want to be in a community we care about deeply and that we can come to know more and more. … We want to help build prosperity downtown so our neighbors can live well, and we can do the things that really matter in our lives.”

Kevin Bernetsky, is spearheading STS’s civic pride research efforts. He said the goal of the research and prospective sign creation is to help everyone to have a sense of belonging and “love where they live.”

“Our dream is to eventually tell the whole story of Steubenville, up to the modern day because of all the renewal that’s happening,” Bernetsky said.

Hyman said, “I was speaking with somebody about Steubenville, and he told me the core problem with Steubenville is that it doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up, and Strong Towns Steubenville is hopefully a sounding board and an ingredient in helping Steubenville decide.”