The Strong Towns Strengths Test: How Do the Places in Greenville County Score?

What truly makes a town a great place to live? Is it rapid growth and new buildings, or something deeper? While many areas in Greenville County are booming, that's only part of the story. To understand what creates a resilient, livable, and financially sound community, we apply the Strong Towns Strengths Test, a 10-point checklist that reveals the true character and durability of a place. Join hosts Katy Smith and Nathaniel DeSantis as they walk through this powerful framework, question by question, using Greenville, Greer, Traveler's Rest, Simpsonville, and Mauldin as real-world examples.

This episode of Simple Civics Greenville County tackles the core issues that determine a city's health. We explore what makes a strong town by analyzing everything from the design of our streets to the diversity of our economy. Using the Strong Towns Strengths Test, we uncover why some places feel vibrant and connected while others are stressful and draining. We discuss the importance of pedestrian friendly cities, the subtle power of local government and zoning, and provide actionable insights into how to improve your town. You’ll learn to see Greenville County development through a new lens, understanding the critical difference between short-term growth and long-term strength. Whether it’s questioning if a bustling main street has more people than cars, or whether three generations of a family could live within walking distance, this test provides a fascinating report card on the places we call home. We also dive into the critical roles of public space for civic engagement, the economic resilience that comes from a diverse employer base (including companies like Michelin, GE, and BMW), and the necessity of planning for long-term infrastructure maintenance.

What Makes a Strong Town? An Introduction

Katy Smith: What makes a strong town? I suspect your gut reaction is, I know it when I see it. And I bet you feel in your gut that we have some very strong towns right here within Greenville County. But what attributes would you lift up to visitors if you were asked to describe them? I'm Katy Smith with Greater Good Greenville, and on this episode of Simple Civics Greenville County, our producer Nathaniel DeSantis and I will walk through the Strong Towns Strengths Test to get your thoughts flowing about strong towns you've experienced.

I discovered the Strengths Test all the way back in 2016 when someone shared it with me after it was published by Strong Towns, a national organization that advocates for cities of all sizes to be safe, livable, and inviting. They work to elevate local government to be the highest level of collaboration for people working together in a place, not merely the lowest in a hierarchy of governments.

When I read the test, I was struck by the ways places in Greenville County earned some very high marks, and others not so much. Nathaniel and I will walk through the Strong Towns strengths test and discuss our assessment of each question. But we'd love to hear from you. Do you think we have strong towns here within Greenville County? As we review the 10 questions, you might think of political entities like our six cities of Fountain Inn, Greenville, Greer, Mauldin, Simpsonville, and Traveler's Rest. Or you might think of places that aren't officially towns or cities, but have a place in your heart, such as Taylor's, Five Forks, Marietta, or Berea. And by the way, if you're wanting to argue with me that these are towns, I'll point you to our show notes in which we did a very helpful episode on cities, towns, places, and zip codes.

Also in the show notes will be the Strong Towns Strengths Test, so you can walk through it yourself.

Nathaniel DeSantis: And welcome back everyone to another episode of Simple Civics. Nathaniel here with Katy. And today, as Katy mentioned, we're going to talk about strong towns and what makes a strong town. Now, I think that a lot of people living in Greenville might think Greenville is a strong town because of all the growth we're having. And that is enough to qualify something as a strong town. But I think what we're going to discover is that it's a little bit more complicated than just is the place growing or is it not growing? So why don't we figure out how strong are the places in Greenville County?

Katy Smith: I love it. Nathaniel, why don't you walk us through the Strong Towns Strengths Test?

Applying the Strong Towns Strengths Test to Greenville County

Nathaniel DeSantis: All right. So there are 10 total strengths that we're looking for here, and we'll go through all 10 today. The first is take a photo of your main street at midday. Does the picture show more people than cars? Katy, what is this? What's this metric? Why is it important?

Katy Smith: Well, it is such a great way to capture how focused on the full pedestrian and business customer and resident experience is your main street. And of course, we have a lot of main streets in Greenville County because of our different cities, as well as some of our places. Taylor's has a main street, as many of you know.

If you were to take a photo of the city of Greenville's downtown main street at lunchtime. You guys know what you would see. You'd see people walking out for lunch or on a quick stroll during their break from their office. You'd probably see tourists strolling with bags from Mast General Store. You might see teenagers who can't yet drive but are able to enjoy time on their own like I, Gen Xer, did in the mall when I was a kid. But it shows a place with a lot of vibrancy, a lot of life, and a lot of people and community together. So really, as you think about the places, the towns that are important to you, what do you see and how is the full user experience represented in it?

Nathaniel DeSantis: So this reminds me, if you go downtown, as I'm sure a lot of listeners do, you do see a lot of people walking around. Yes, you see pictures of people in their cars, but you do also see those people walking around and it's very vibrant and lively. But it reminds me also of Woodruff Road, where if you take a picture, I think you might see one person walking, one pedestrian walking, if you're lucky. And it's mainly just people in cars probably going to downtown so they can get out and walk around.

Katy Smith: Yeah. Woodruff Road, it doesn't have to be the street that's called Main Street. It's the street that represents a core part of your place's life. And Woodruff Road is a perfect contrast. I'm sorry, but it just sucks the life out of me. And I do shop at those stores and patronize those businesses. But man, I have to time it. I get angry at the people in the cars around me. It's stressful. And I also want to shout out all of our cities like Traveler's Rest, Greer, Fountain Inn, Simpsonville, Mauldin. They've all developed beautiful places that are the heart of the city. And that's what matters.

Nathaniel DeSantis: And the first thing that I think of, though, is how would something like seasonality impact this? Because we just had a heat wave here. Many people may not be going out at that time or on the opposite end of the spectrum when it's super cold. People may not be out that much.

Katy Smith: You know what? A really smart urban planner designs for temperature and climate. So when you think about downtown Greenville, it is tree-lined, which makes it more possible for you to be out in midday, even in the heat. It's not great on a 100-degree day, but it really helps. There are cities that, like Minneapolis is a city where it's extremely cold and people aren't wanting to hang out on the sidewalk in the wintertime. But if you've ever traveled there, you know there's a lot of overpasses where you can move from building to building without even having to go outside. The transit stops are little shelter buildings that you can sit within to stay a little warmer than you might out on a bench. So you can design a space for human beings when you're taking climate into account.

Nathaniel DeSantis: Moving on to point number two, if there were a revolution in your town, would people instinctively know where to gather to participate?

Katy Smith: So you might hear this and gasp to say, I'm not participating in a revolution or I've already done participated in the revolution. But I think the point is, if you needed to convene in your town. Where would you go? And I really would highlight some of the things that Strong Towns lists up. What is your gut reaction to this? I am a resident of the city of Greenville, and I know exactly where I would go. I would go to the plaza outside of Falls Park by Jianna and Spill the Beans. That's the place where I would gather, or down on the plaza in the park. The Peace Center has space in front of it. There are some obvious places that are made for people, and that is true throughout Greenville County.

There are other places, the place where I grew up, at least when I grew up there, I cannot really think of where I would go. It would be a parking lot in front of a big box store. That sense of what is your gut reaction? What would your friends and family think? Is there a history of marches or protests or community celebrations? And what's the permitting process for those? Those all suggest, is my town a strong place that celebrates abundant civic engagement, not just with our culture, but with actually having places for it to happen.

Nathaniel DeSantis: I really love how Strong Towns Strengths Test phrased that with the word revolution, but I'm going to add some nuance to it because I think what's really cool is when I hear this immediately when I think of Greenville, I realize how it depends on the revolution where I would go to gather. So let's say it's something focused more on the environment. I might decide to pick something like Unity Park, where it's outdoors and the whole purpose is to be green and environmental and there are people who can gather outside. Whereas if I'm protesting maybe taxes, I might choose the county offices. So I kind of like that with Greenville. Depending on the revolution you're trying to start, you have multiple places where you can immediately think to gather.

Katy Smith: It's really about public space. Is there public space that is owned by the community that the community feels ownership in its heart of? And do we have a history of using it? Because we've had marches down Main Street. We've had parades down all of our main streets in Greenville County. It's a place that the public owns and the public uses.

Nathaniel DeSantis: Moving on to the third one, imagine your favorite street in town did not exist. Could it be built today if the construction had to follow your local rules?

Katy Smith: So this really has to do with building and zoning codes. If you picture your main street, what made it possible were the rules that were there to guide its construction at the time? And there may not have even been very many rules depending how old that street is. So what are the rules underlining how land can be used and what structures can be there? They change over time, but they don't retroactively impact things that are already built unless that thing is altered.

So let's talk about a few places to highlight this example. Schools and school grounds are a great example of building guidelines and zoning changes. So Stone Academy, which is an elementary school located in the north main neighborhood of the city of Greenville, it's the oldest continuously operating school building on the same grounds in Greenville County. It was built in parts from 1917 to 1924. And it was built in an era where there were literally hardly any cars in Greenville County. They probably numbered in the hundreds. This is when folks relied on buses or their feet to get around. It would have been nothing for the residents of North Main to walk from downtown to that school or to an office downtown. So just a very different environment, a more densely built neighborhood with a school as the heart of it that did not need a carpool line at the time.

The oldest high school building in Greenville County was completed in 1938 for Greenville High School. Again, hardly any students, if any at all, had their own car to drive to school. And you can bet parents were not dropping kids off in a carpool line. People rode buses. There were 10 million rides a year around that time. So these buildings have so much charm, and they are the hearts of their neighborhoods. But of course, in this day and age, Greenville High has challenges. There's not enough parking for all of the students. The Green Avenue neighborhood has changed dramatically, and those residents are concerned about students parking on the street. It's modern sensibilities with an older building. By contrast, if you look at new schools in Greenville County, like Fountain Inn High or the new Reedy Laurel Elementary School. These are gorgeous buildings with warm school communities or one that's emerging for Reedy Laurel as an example, but they have very different land use and architecture than back in the day.

Nathaniel DeSantis: Great. Understood. Then moving on to number four, is an owner of a single family home able to get permission to add a small rental unit onto their property without any real hassle?

Katy Smith: This might sound like, what? Why is this on there? I don't know if that struck you when you read this. When you think about what makes a vibrant community, there's lots of different kinds of residents that can live there. There might be single folks, there might be renters, there might be older people or young adults who've come back home and don't want to live with mom and dad but can't afford a place. Things like accessory dwelling units, these are often called, help address that.

There are a lot of these in older parts of our towns throughout Greenville. It might be a garage apartment. It might be a house that's subdivided into smaller rental units. The new zoning code in the city of Greenville made those possible. It allowed for someone to build a granny house in the backyard that they could rent out to somebody. And so strong towns make that possible. It can also be another source of income for folks, although it is a challenge when they are short-term rentals, which we've addressed in our city of Greenville zoning code.

Nathaniel DeSantis: Moving on to question five, and this one I actually see being very important to Greenville. If your largest employer left town, are you confident the city would survive?

Katy Smith: So some of you might be from an area that was dramatically impacted by the loss of the one major employer. And of course, we have stories of that all over our country. In Greenville County, I suspect a lot of y'all know this, but let me just share just in case. We've got some very large players from the private sector in our county. We've got Michelin, Duke Energy, GE, Fluor, Synnex, TD Bank. Of course, just across the county line, we have BMW, which employs tons of folks here in Ryobi and Anderson County. These are really vital, but it's nice that that list is not just one. We do have some diversity of employers here, thanks to the longtime dedicated work of our economic development folks.

Then government and the health care system is also a very significant employer. We have Prisma Health, Greenville County Schools, Bon Secours St. Francis Health System, Greenville County itself. These are our tax dollars at work and our health care charges at work, which help provide these jobs. And they also benefit us because the employees of these folks come and shop in our own businesses or patronize our services in some way. So that diversity of employers is really important. And we need to never forget the role of employers, large and small, in making this a vibrant community.

Nathaniel DeSantis: I think Greenville has done a really good job diversifying the businesses that we have here and that we attract here. So if we were to lose a really big one, we're not losing 50% of our workforce and employment when they leave because you've seen that in certain cities. I think the first one that comes to mind to me is Rochester with Kodak. And they're building back up now, but it's really important to be diversified like this.

And I think Greenville has done a good job with that. Obviously, it would hurt if we lost a BMW. That wouldn't be good. But I don't think when I think of this question, if they left town, I'm confident Greenville would still survive. Will we have some pains from it? Absolutely. Will we survive? Absolutely. So I think Greenville has done a really good job with that. Moving on to number six, this is a good one. Is it safe for children to walk or bike to school and many of their other activities without adult supervision?

Katy Smith: So this seems very simple, but it checks a lot of boxes for all of us as community members. So if you just think about from a kid's perspective, that experience of independence and exercise is great. And I'm going to come back to that.

If you think as a community member, if you've got 500 kids trying to get into an elementary school building and they are all singly being driven to school by their parents, that's that many more cars you have to battle on your way to work. So if we can get some of those kids on bikes or on foot, it reduces traffic, it helps the environment, it creates just more free time for parents, it makes a huge difference.

And a lot of that has to do with the ways we engineer our communities. Do we have crosswalks? Do we have safe visibility for kids? And also, what's our culture? Do we encourage this? Do we educate kids and drivers on how to be safe? There is something so important about this, though, to promote a child's independence. So I want you to think not just about cities that might have lots of crosswalks or stoplights. It's also possible in rural areas. Is there land that children can roam on and explore on their own? Because that experience of independence is so important. I bet that everyone listening, and I bet you too, Nathaniel, can remember a time when you got to go do something independently when you were a kid.

I can remember being a kid and visiting a friend who lived in a walkable area and riding our bikes to a convenience store and buying candy. And that was such a big deal to me. But I lived in an area that was pretty rural. It was really suburban, but it was in development at the time. And my brother and I would go roam in the woods for hours and have so much fun. Just investigating. And we need places like that for kids and experiences like that for kids today.

Nathaniel DeSantis: And I'd even add on to this. How does this city or town or county react when a place is not safe? So this reminds me of a recent episode we did talking about Augusta Street. There was a really tragic death there. And the residents came together to try to make this change happen on there. And there was a traffic calming effort that was done and it worked really well. And it's a great example of if it's not safe, what is a city or town doing to address that? All right, moving on to number seven. Are there neighborhoods where three generations of a family could reasonably find a place to live, all within walking distance of each other?

Katy Smith: This is another good question. And I would say for sure in every city of Greenville County, the answer would be yes. I'm imagining that you're picturing them. Some of you probably live near a relative and you do live within walking distance of each other. And what this really gets to is, do you have an array of housing types and an array of housing affordabilities that are all within one space together?

So my mom, who is retired, lives near us and she does not want a large home. She is done with that time of life, nor does she want a large yard. And so she is near us, but we do have a larger home and yard because we've just finished raising two kids in it. And those two kids should either come back, they're probably going to want an apartment when they first get back, or a very small home that they could share with friends. So all of that has to do with what people's different price points are and the kind of structure that they want. And having that variety like a forest, having all those types of plants and trees all together, that's what makes a healthy community.

Nathaniel DeSantis: And that takes us to the eighth part of this, 8 out of 10. If you wanted to eat only locally produced food for a month, could you?

Katy Smith: What do you think?

Nathaniel DeSantis: I think the answer is yes, depending on affordability. So I know that we have a lot of great places like Feed and Seed. We even featured them on the podcast where if I wanted to eat only locally produced food for a month, I absolutely could. But sometimes I do also see the prices associated with locally produced food. And so the answer is yes, you could only eat locally produced food, but budget is also, in my opinion, a very important factor of that. And sometimes, and this is not, I'm not pinpointing feed and seed exactly here. I'm just saying in general, locally produced food sometimes does have a bit of a higher price associated with it. So long story short, I think the answer is yes, but... Does that make sense?

Katy Smith: Yeah, those are really good points. I'm betting they're getting at a couple aspects of this. One is, do you have land near your town that's available for agriculture, which we are very lucky to have in the upstate and are very grateful to folks like Upstate Forever and others that have worked to conserve land to continue to be available for agriculture. I think part of it is seasonality. Do you have enough growing seasons to produce local food throughout the different growing seasons? Do you have places to process it? And then for sure, that affordability question.

We really are lucky to have a variety of places throughout Greenville County where you can buy locally grown and locally processed food. We've got Swamp Rabbit Cafe and Grocery, which was a pioneer in this space. We've got the Tomato Vine and Traveler's Rest. There's the Mauldin Open Air Market. There are the farms themselves. So we do have a lot of places that folks can go. And great news is many of them do accept SNAP, EBT, which is a program that if you qualify for it, can make that food more affordable.

Nathaniel DeSantis: Okay, and moving on to 9 out of 10. Before building or accepting a new infrastructure, does the local government clearly identify how future generations will afford to maintain it?

Katy Smith: All right. This is a pretty lofty question. And some local governments may have a policy that really talks about forecasting what capital expenditures will be needed to maintain something and figure it into a multi-year projected budget. But I think the idea here is remember that anything you do now as a local government is creating a legacy of some kind that another generation is going to have to deal with. So you are either planting a tree under whose shade someone else gets to sit, or you are planting one seed of bamboo that's going to multiply and take over and leave your grandkids to deal with how to eradicate it. Or let's maybe use kudzu as an example for this area. So I think it's that concept of recognizing the expenditures that we undertake now will still have costs in the future.

Nathaniel DeSantis: Right. And this is something that I feel like a lot of cities and towns may not do too well on because unfortunately, the reality of life is that a lot of elected officials are worried about the next election. And there are some who are very long-term focused. I think, again, Greenville has done a great job. If you look at our downtown, that was a vision that has grown and that was very long-term thinking. But I think a lot of people sometimes forget about this aspect in government or defer it to the next generation. I think there are parts of this that Greenville has done well. I think there are parts of it that they can refine and do a little bit better on. But that's a really good question and very thought provoking. And I think goes a little bit deeper even than just the surface level question about how are we raising the future of elected officials to think about long term impacts? So a good question. Moving on to question number 10. Does the city government spend no more than 10% of its locally generated revenue on debt service?

Katy Smith: This is another question for posterity. And the good news is we are doing well in this area. We have really healthy budgets and not a lot of debt and really strong credit ratings for at least some of our local governments. This is just an important thing, though, to consider. I know a lot of us are concerned at the federal level about the amount of debt our federal government is in because it is something that children and grandchildren will have to deal with. But that budgetary health is important for strong towns.

From Analysis to Action: How to Strengthen Your Town

Nathaniel DeSantis: So that is the total list of 10 strong talent strength tests. And I guess my last question, Katy, is if a listener identified one of these questions and thought that maybe we could do better on it, what can they do? What are the takeaways and how could someone actually make an actionable impact? In Greenville, in their town, in Mauldin, wherever they are, to make their city stronger?

Katy Smith: First, I would encourage all of you to click on the Strong Towns Strengths Test link in the show notes. And it has a drill down on almost all of these 10 questions to learn more about the nuances of them and what can be done in local communities. And truly, all of these are the heart of what we do on Simple Civics every single week. They have to do with getting involved in local government decisions and talking to your neighbors, getting involved in schools and getting a part of zoning and all the things that make a local community tick.

So really, we have more than 200 great episodes to help you learn more about how to get involved. But I believe the thing that most makes a town strong. And of course, by a town, I mean a place, all the places in Greenville County are the people who live there. And so you having listened to this entire episode and caring about this community, that gives me tremendous hope. That's what's going to make us strong for generations to come.

Nathaniel DeSantis: All right. Well, thanks again, everyone, for listening to the 10 parts of this test. We hope you identify parts of the city that you live in that this applies to. And let us know what you think, you're welcome to contact us. All contact information is in the show notes, and we'll see you next week for another episode of Simple Civics.

Catherine Puckett: Simple Civics: Greenville County is a project of Greater Good Greenville. Greater Good Greenville was catalyzed by the merger of the Nonprofit Alliance and the Greenville Partnership for Philanthropy. You can learn more on our website at greatergoodgreenville.org.