Rachel Quednau serves as Communications Director for Strong Towns, has been a regular contributor and podcast host for Strong Towns since 2015. Previously, she worked for several organizations fighting to end homelessness at the federal and local levels. Rachel is a Midwesterner currently living in Milwaukee, WI with her husband, Jack. She draws from her experiences living in New York City, Washington, DC, Walla Walla, WA and Minneapolis, MN to help her build better places wherever she is. You can find her musings on Twitter @rquednau. One of her favorite ways to get to know a new city is by going for a run in it.
How to Build a More Resilient Local Food System
The more food we can access nearby, the more our communities can be prepared for whatever the future brings—not to mention keeping transportation costs lower and bolstering our local economies.
April 28, 2021
This Texas Town Is Growing Stronger By Thinking *Inside* the Box
A half hour from El Paso, TX, lies a small, young town that is piloting a creative local food program to help keep residents fed and encourage entrepreneurship—all while focusing on native plants that grow quickly and cheaply.
August 13, 2020
Why Walkable Streets are More Economically Productive
What is the value of a street where people can walk safely? Why build streets that are constructed with the needs of people in mind, not just the needs of cars?
January 19, 2018
Modern Small-Scale Farming: Could it Sustain Us? Could we Sustain It?
The persistent question for me as we explore local food issues here at Strong Towns is: Could any of our communities actually survive on local food alone? Could we ever get to a point where local food makes up most of our diets and where local farmers are successfully supplying that? These questions (inspired by the Strong Towns Strength Test) have been buzzing in the back of my mind and, while I want to believe it’s feasible to live off of local food, the more I study this, the more I realize it would be pretty darn tough, if not impossible.
August 15, 2017
What I Learned from my First Garden
This year, I started my first garden—a micro garden really.
August 22, 2016
A Realistic Look at the Local Food Movement
Incorporating a higher percentage of locally-produced food from small-scale farms into our lives is important in the way that shopping at local businesses is important: because it keeps money in the community and it diversifies our economy.
June 17, 2016