Local News

Strong Towns Steubenville hosts first community conversation

STEUBENVILLE -- Strong Towns Steubenville, a grassroots group advocating for city revitalization, hosted its first community conversation Wednesday, uniting Steubenville residents to discuss their ideas about improving their city.

The event, hosted at Froehlich's Classic Corner, was attended by over 30 adults and a handful of children. Adult attendees listened to a presentation by Jacob Hyman, Strong Towns Steubenville local conversation leader, before taking part in breakout sessions to discuss what works and what needs improvement in Steubenville.

"This was exactly what it needed to be," said Hyman, reflecting later on the event. "It was an introduction to the general community of Strong Towns."

Beginning the event was an introduction by Hyman of the history of Strong Towns, a national nonprofit started by civil engineer Charles Marohn that advocates for cities to develop in a fiscally responsible manner. Strong Towns Steubenville is an autonomous group that seeks to enact certain principles from Strong Towns regarding how to go about developing in this manner.

Hyman said Strong Towns Steubenville's desire is to save Steubenville and to help it decide "what it wants to be when it grows up." He highlighted five principles Strong Towns Steubenville wants to pursue in its revitalization efforts: useful biking and walking, civic and neighborhood pride, transparent local finance, incremental development and a human-centered Steubenville.

Also, Hyman compared aerial photographs of Steubenville that exhibited the amount of buildings torn down between the 1950s and the present day. At one point, Hyman asked attendees to fixate on any building in a 1950s-era photo before he flipped to a modern photo. Hyman asked attendees to raise their hands if their building was no longer there, and many raised their hands.

"We've lost our history not just in parts but in whole," Hyman said. "These are people's lives, livelihoods and memories that we, the people who are trying to make a difference in Steubenville, now need to research."

Hyman played for attendees two informational videos, the first of which featured Strong Towns members and others speaking about what they think it means to be a strong town.

The first video featured comments about Strong Towns' mission from Marohn, who said, "We (Strong Towns) want everybody to be able to ... have been able to look back at the end of the day, at the end of a life, and say 'I made this place better. This place is better because of me."

A second video addressed city financing and "how the growth pattern of city financing has changed," Hyman said. The video compared post-WWII suburban development to a system of fraud known as a Ponzi scheme because, it said, both share a reliance upon new investors paying revenue to old investors, and both can come crumbling down if the investor pool runs out. The video closed by encouraging a bottom-up approach to reshaping towns and advocating for change.

Following the videos was a breakout discussion session, during which attendees were asked to discuss amongst their groups questions about what Steubenville has done successfully in the past and is doing successfully. Other questions included what individuals think makes a strong town and what individuals think Steubenville wants to be when it grows up.

Attendees shared their answers to the questions after the session, and Hyman collected the answers on a slideshow.

First Ward Councilwoman Asantewa Anyabwile, who attended the event, said it was excellent. She added, "I think there needs to be a little bit more community participation, and, as the meetings go along, you may get that more. I'd like to see more city council, more city officials come to these because we all need to broaden our ideas.

"There are citizens who have good ideas about what the city could be, and we need to be more of a listening ear."

Kyle Kavanaugh, a Strong Trams Steubenville core team member who has lived in Steubenville for about a year, said he grew up in suburbia, which he said is "desolate."

"Right now, the car is king," Kavanaugh said. "We kind of have to dethrone the car. But most of us don't have an experience of living in a city where the car is not king, where you can walk or bike to places, and how nice and tight-knit those communities are, how you actually know your neighbors."

Bernard Camacho, who moved to Steubenville from Allentown, Pa., two weeks ago, said of the event, "You had people who want to be here, ... activities that made sense. It gave everybody a chance to talk to each other and share ideas. ... It was great."

Strong Towns Steubenville will be hosting a community bike ride called Cycle the City on Saturday at 9 a.m. The ride will depart from the fountain by Historic Fort Steuben and loosely follow the Steubenville Heritage Trail.

Also, Strong Towns Steubenville will be presenting a history of Steubenville's subdivisions, compiled by core team members, to Steubenville City Council next Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.