New Group Aims To Help Steubenville Find Identity
Christopher Dacanay Trending
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.
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.