Greater Greater Washington made urbanism a mainstream topic. Donate to keep us going strong.

Once upon a time, having a walkable, urban city was a niche idea in our region, one special interest among many. Today it’s a mainstream discussion topic all over the region’s cafés and living rooms. Greater Greater Washington helped make that happen.

Before Greater Greater Washington entered the scene eight years ago, there was already a collection of writers covering planning and transportation topics in DC. I wrote at BeyondDC, Richard Layman wrote at Rebuilding Place, and Dan Reed wrote at Just Up The Pike, to name a few. But none of us had a large reach. None of us had the resources to cover a wide variety of topics, every day, in time to be relevant to the day’s news.

DC’s online urbanist community, such as it was, had no home base and no leader. We were a niche network of geek wonks, great at expressing opinions but not so good at building broad support or generating action.

Greater Greater Washington changed all that.

By providing a single place for us to rally around, GGWash made us more than the sum of our parts. GGWash became a home-base for the city’s urbanists to pool our ideas and amplify our voices. More people joined us, and as our voices grew we began to have impacts outside our echo chamber of wonks.

The Washington Post noticed us, and other media organizations like WAMU radio started coming to us when they needed a quote.

Before long we were changing city budgets and affecting development plans. More recently, we’ve contributed to big wins in zoning and bus lanes.

Thanks to Greater Greater Washington, urbanists in the DC region are a political force. We’ve gone mainstream, and we’re making a difference.

Please help us keep making a difference. Please donate what you can, so our community will still have the strong voice it needs.