December Update: GIS Recap and 2026 Planning

December Update: GIS Recap & 2026 Planning

Hello Worcester Strong Towners!

Next Meeting: Our next meeting is this Saturday, December 13th, from 4pm-5:30pm at Technocopia at 44 Portland Street (please use the furthest door to the left and the intercom). Our focus for this meeting will be working through and beginning to plan our priority campaigns for 2026.

Thank you to everyone for attending our November meeting. We got a quick introduction from several Strong Towns Worcester members on geographic information systems (GIS), which is a visual way of looking at and analyzing data. We learned about various data available from the City of Worcester, MassMapper, and more that can help us to visualize the world, and, especially, Worcester.

Action Items

GIS Tutorial Interest: Our November meeting generated a lot of discussion about GIS resources, capabilities, and more (and many of us even stayed later than scheduled to keep chatting about it!). If there is any interest in a follow-up GIS tutorial meeting, let us know your thoughts via this survey.

Vernon Connected: This is a planning effort regarding the future of the Vernon Street Bridge and the surrounding neighborhoods. These are neighborhoods that were separated by I-290 decades ago, and this is an opportunity to reconnect them.

  • You can learn more about Vernon Connected here as well as access and answer a survey.

  • If you’ve ever encountered an issue with the transportation network in this area, you can add a marker to the map to bring the project team’s attention to it.

Updates

New Website: We are happy to announce that we are developing a new Strong Towns Worcester website! We are planning to launch this website soon after our upcoming meeting.

Cranksgiving: On November 15, Worcester Earn-a-Bike hosted its annual Cranksgiving event! Jacob and Kiara from the leadership team participated. Jacob had this to say:

“On Saturday the 15th, we got together with Worcester Earn-a-Bike to participate in Cranksgiving, an annual bike-based scavenger hunt for charity. We raced around the city on the short course, which takes about 2 hours, while others took the longer 4 hour course. We hit up Gala market, Bahnan’s, Ed Hyder’s, and more. Plus for a bonus we dropped off a few things at the WooFridge on Portland Street. We hope more of us can make it out next year for a bigger and better Strong Towns Worcester team.”

Ongoing Efforts

  • We continue to advocate for the Now|Next Plan, the Vision Zero Safety Action Plan, the Mobility Action Plan, and the Housing Production Plan.

Social Media

We have an Instagram, a Discord, a Facebook group, a Facebook page, and a Bluesky. We’d love to see you there and hear your thoughts! If you have any pictures or other Worcester-specific content you’d like us to post, please share!

Thank you for your continued interest! We look forward to bringing you more in the future.