Curtis Lowe

Austin’s $50 Million Community Wealth Fund: The Real Story Behind the Model 12 Cities Want to Copy

What Actually Happened When Austin Put $50 Million Into Resident-Owned Businesses Two months ago, I sat in a packed community center in East Austin watching Maria explain how her cleaning cooperative landed $45,000 in startup funding. Not from a bank that wanted three years of financials she didn’t have. Not from an investor looking for … Read moreAustin’s $50 Million Community Wealth Fund: The Real Story Behind the Model 12 Cities Want to Copy

The Tuesday Night Parents Who Changed Our Bus Routes

When School Pickup Becomes Policy Research Sarah Martinez was sitting in her car outside Lincoln Elementary last Tuesday, scrolling through her phone while waiting for her eight-year-old, when she noticed the city’s transportation survey in her email. Most parents would have deleted it. Sarah opened it, read about proposed bus route cuts, and by Thursday … Read moreThe Tuesday Night Parents Who Changed Our Bus Routes

Three Lots, Two Years, and One Zoning Variance: What We Learned Building Riverside Commons

The Tuesday Night That Changed Everything Picture this: you’re sitting in folding chairs in Maria Santos’s living room on a Tuesday night in February, and someone just said the words “drainage easement” for the third time in ten minutes. Half the neighbors are squinting at a hand-drawn map spread across the coffee table, and the … Read moreThree Lots, Two Years, and One Zoning Variance: What We Learned Building Riverside Commons

Why Our Main Street Businesses Keep Fighting City Hall (And What We Can Do About It)

The Pattern Repeating on Every Block At last Tuesday’s planning commission meeting, three separate business owners stood up to oppose the new sidewalk improvement project. Their reasoning? The construction timeline would force them to close for two weeks during their busiest season. Meanwhile, the city’s economic development director presented data showing how similar projects had … Read moreWhy Our Main Street Businesses Keep Fighting City Hall (And What We Can Do About It)

How We Turned a Weedy Lot Into the Heart of Our Neighborhood

The Moment Everything Changed It started with Mrs. Chen standing in front of a chain-link fence, pointing at a quarter-acre of weeds and broken concrete. “This could feed twenty families,” she said to the three of us who’d shown up to the neighborhood association meeting that Tuesday night. The lot had been empty for eight … Read moreHow We Turned a Weedy Lot Into the Heart of Our Neighborhood

Why Our Tree Planting Group Split Apart (And What We Learned About Power)

The Meeting That Changed Everything It was supposed to be a simple planning session for our neighborhood tree planting initiative. Twelve people crammed into Maria’s living room, laptops balanced on coffee tables, arguing about whether we should accept funding from Greenway Development Corp. Half the room saw it as a practical solution to our budget … Read moreWhy Our Tree Planting Group Split Apart (And What We Learned About Power)

When Good People Disagree: What I Learned from Our Neighborhood’s Messiest Fight

The Fight Nobody Wanted Last spring, our neighborhood association found itself in the middle of the kind of conflict that makes people stop showing up to meetings. The issue seemed straightforward enough: should we support the city’s plan to add protected bike lanes to Maple Street? On one side stood longtime residents worried about losing … Read moreWhen Good People Disagree: What I Learned from Our Neighborhood’s Messiest Fight

The Infrastructure of Connection: What Happens When We Stop Showing Up

The Meeting That Never Happened Last Tuesday, the Parks and Recreation committee was supposed to discuss the community garden expansion. Three people showed up. The city staff member who had prepared a presentation on soil testing and water access sat there for twenty minutes, then packed up her charts. The woman who’d been advocating for … Read moreThe Infrastructure of Connection: What Happens When We Stop Showing Up

The Real Talk Guide to Community Event Planning: What Works, What Doesn’t, and How to Actually Get Help

Start With Your Why (And Be Honest About Your Capacity) Before you post that enthusiastic Facebook announcement about your neighborhood cleanup or book fair, take a hard look at what you’re actually signing up for. I learned this the hard way when I organized what I optimistically called a “community garden kickoff” that turned into … Read moreThe Real Talk Guide to Community Event Planning: What Works, What Doesn’t, and How to Actually Get Help

The Art of Being Neighbors: How Small Gestures Bridge Big Differences

When Languages Mix at the Corner Store Maria Santos learned her first words of Arabic from a shopping list. Her neighbor, Fatima Al-Rashid, had accidentally dropped it outside Patel’s Market on Elm Street, and Maria noticed the careful handwriting mixing English and Arabic script. “Milk, bread, زيت الزيتون,” it read, and Maria found herself curious … Read moreThe Art of Being Neighbors: How Small Gestures Bridge Big Differences