After four rounds in a March Madness-style tournament against 15 other North American cities, Brattleboro, VT won the title Strongest Town in North America. The results of the contest will be officially published later today (Friday, April 14). It was a very close race against the other finalist town, Saranac Lake, NY.
A representative from the community will receive an award on behalf of the city at the Strong Towns National Gathering, a conference of city-builders focused on improving transportation safety, municipal budgeting, housing opportunity, and more, at the end of May. Brattleboro will also be the subject of a professionally produced documentary video about building community prosperity from the bottom-up, to be released later this spring.
Voters from an international audience of millions selected Brattleboro to win the eighth annual Strongest Town Contest based on its dedication to Strong Towns principles, such as transparent local accounting, building safe and productive streets, encouraging incremental housing, eliminating parking mandates, and ending highway expansions.
“In many North American cities and towns, it’s hard for people to envision a better future, let alone plot a path to it,” Norm Van Eeden Petersman, Member Advocate for Strong Towns, said. “We want to show everyone Brattleboro, to hold them up as an example of how residents really can build their towns up better a little at a time.”
For more information, visit strongtowns.org/strongesttown
Congrats
I’m kind of surprised; we were up against some great towns. Congrats, Bratt. I think we proved how strong we are when Irene came to town 12 years ago. Nice to see it holds true in others’ eyes under new challenges now.
It was close
From their site:
“Brattleboro has been a champ through every stage of the contest, making it past worthy contenders Dunellen, NJ; Selma, NC; and Jackson, TN in the first three rounds. In the final round, Brattleboro squared off against Saranac Lake, New York—and it was a tight contest between two incredible challengers! At the end, Brattleboro pulled through with 50.45% of the votes, versus 49.55% for Saranac Lake. This was one of the closer calls we’ve had in Strongest Town Contest history, and our hats are off to both of our finalists.”
We should invite the Saranac folks over for a shared celebration. (And they should reciprocate!)