Love for all things local - Jacob Moses

Livable City

A tough but real pair of questions: do you know anyone, are you good friends with anyone within a short walk of your home? And how much of your life can you live everyday without needed to leave it to buy something?

In this episode, I interview Jacob Moses where he talks about these kinds of things for the neighborhood that he lives in Denton, Texas. Jacob shakes up the status quo for how we normally treat strangers by setting an amazing example for how to befriend people in your neighborhood and how to get to know them. Oh, and yes he’ll give you good reasons why you should even want to do this in the first place.

Why do we fear and resist doing this sort of thing and believe that being anonymous in our neighborhood is what we prefer?

I challenge all of us to reconsider this by doing some conversational experimentation looking for ways to keep connecting with these strangers around us until they become acquaintances and hopefully turn into friends.

And what can you do together with your new-found acquaintances to take small but deliberate steps towards improving the neighborhood that you share ownership of?

Jacob is the Community Builder for Strong Towns, an amazing organization doing the hard work of building financially strong and resilient communities. He’s the host of two weekly podcasts It’s the Little Things and The Not-Boring Tech Writer. Connect with Jacob on Twitter.

“I’m a sucker for walking in that neighborhood with narrow streets, wide sidewalks with a beautiful mix of single family homes, duplexes, four-plexes…” - Jacob Moses

Resources to help you connect better in your neighborhood:

• Strong Towns Strength Test for neighborhoods, towns and cities
• Strong Towns book: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity
• Tactical Urbanism book