The second round of voting for Strong Towns’ ninth annual “Strongest Town” contest began Monday and closes on Thursday, with the city of Norman competing against Davis, California.
Strong Towns is a nonprofit media advocacy organization that hopes to replace American suburban development through promoting civic engagement. The winner of the competition will receive an award certificate and a documentary short film about the town.
According to a press release, the award highlights the winning city’s innovations in safety, transportation, housing and financial resilience. The contest covers five different rounds, which eliminate candidates through a bracket-style tournament called the “March Madness of Urbanism.”
Round two pairs each of the 16 candidates against one other city through eight different one-on-one competitions that determine which communities proceed. For the second round, Norman is competing against Davis, California.
The fifth round will be live-streamed in April and will determine the winner among two remaining candidates.
Upon victory, two representatives from the winning community will be flown to the 2024 Strong Towns National Gathering, which will be held from May 14 to 15 in Cincinnati, where they will be presented an award certificate. Following the award, a video creator from Strong Towns will visit the winning town and create a documentary short film about it.
Voting is available on the Strongest Towns Contest website and requires an email address to participate.
In 2022, Norman partnered with Strong Towns to create a Community Action Lab, which is a two-year-long program that consists of leadership training for city staff and leaders, building community resilience and mobilization and promoting public engagement. According to a Strong Towns handout, the program costs $185,000, which is paid in increments throughout the two years.
Ward 8 Councilmember Matt Peacock, who filed Norman’s Strongest Town application, wrote in a text to OU Daily that Norman is a good candidate for the award based on its community improvements.
“The Strongest Town award is given to one city every year based on the work being done to make that community stronger and more resilient, and that metric has been one of my biggest priorities as a Councilmember as well as with many of my colleagues,” Peacock wrote.
Peacock wrote Norman is a leader in multiple areas of policy, including housing availability. He added that such work had led to national recognition through Norman’s Strongest Towns candidacy.
“A lack of housing options in Norman has had negative impacts across the board, and the Norman city council has been hard at work implementing initiatives to combat many of those resulting symptoms,” Peacock wrote. “Instead of just focusing on how to pull people out of the river, we need to be going upstream to find out why they keep falling in the first place.”
This story was edited by Peggy Dodd and Ismael Lele. Lily Grace Battles and Nikkie Aisha copy edited this story.
