Since 2016, we have been sharing ideas for how to make our city grow.
Our mission.
Create a stronger and more resilient Shreveport by growing a culture of engagement and trust between citizens, businesses, and government.
Why we believe ReForm is needed.
Since its founding in 1836, Shreveport's built environment has been formed by a variety of economic and social forces. Built environments are the physical structures — buildings, roads, common spaces, and public services — that provide the foundation on which our city's business and social interactions stand. The built environment is in need of “ReForming” to meet the needs needs of a 21st century economy and to create a fiscally sustainable and prosperous city.
ReForm Shreveport exists to bring people together in conversation and action to find and implement solutions to improve Shreveport's built environment. We do this by instigating dialogue and providing real-world demonstrations in the community to illustrate the methods of meaningful communication between all stakeholders of land use (everybody). To accomplish this, we take inspiration from leading thinkers and communities regarding urban planning and community development, and apply those concepts to find the best way forward for Shreveport.
The core tenets of ReForm Shreveport
The foundation of a strong city is one that is fiscally responsible and stable over the centuries. There are a few core principles that we can look to which have worked over millennia of human development which are still important today.
Incremental Development
One of the most basic concepts important to ReForm is understanding that we don't have all the answers today and new challenges will arise tomorrow. What is important to build within community, business, and government is a culture of trial and error. We should work to try new things and leave behind doing things the way they have been done if they don't work. We can take an idea from somewhere else or build new ones from scratch. What's important is making an effort, and that effort be guided by the remaining three principles.
Self-Correcting Processes
In a healthy community, the design, development, and ordinance culture (including regulatory bodies and their employees) are empowered to make good decisions. Learning to enable take calculated risk in search of better practices - be it building codes, new infrastructure, or bettering amenities. This means allowing individual city employees the agency to say "yes" to simple needs of citizens and business in order to address issues where changes are needed in a timely manner. This is important in a community that wants to be business friendly and respect the needs and quality of life for the citizens.
Stakeholder Engagement
Without people, there is no community. Government cannot function in the best interest of the people if their voices are not heard. ReForm seeks to change this by growing direct lines of communication between neighbors, businesses, and city leaders.
We are currently doing this with our efforts in ReForming Highland Park, where residents have become a part of the process of shaping the future of this public asset and harnessing it to its best potential. However, this process can be applied to any exploration into the use of city assets or discussion about liabilities.
Data-Driven Decisionmaking
Oftentimes, to make the best decisions, we need hard numbers. Data can reveal truths we feel we know in our gut or show us that we were wrong and we can use that to make better decisions in the future.
However, if we are not collecting data or making it available to everyone in a transparent and timely manner, that data isn't being used to its full potential. We aim to make robust data collection, usage, and sharing the norm for all city projects - from streets and sidewalks to land use and public spaces.
Meet the Team
Tim Wright
Founder, President
Tim is a civil engineer and downtown enthusiast, passionate about connecting people who see Shreveport’s potential. He enjoys a good bike ride, cocktail, coffee, or conversation.
Moving from Dallas just a few short years ago, he was pleasantly surprised to enjoy every minute of the smaller city and the tight connections running through the people. He became involved through writing and exploring and sharing ideas about what makes a city great. Re-Form was born out of what he saw as the key issue defining Shreveport: finding areas of our underpopulated city that needed to be invested in and re-formed to help address today’s challenges. It’s exciting to him to hear from national speakers about what works for cities and learn how to apply them to Shreveport; educating local leaders and leaders in the community on how to move forward. However, Tim sees educating Shreveport’s leaders as only one piece of the puzzle, the other is getting the citizenry involved in small projects that make their block of the community better. If Shreveport’s leaders can be in tune with the citizenry, and the citizens can in turn trust local leaders, then the city’s trajectory can only be pointed upwards.
LeVette Fuller
Founding Member, Board Secretary
LeVette is a teen services librarian. She writes about civic engagement and culture for Heliopolis and Shreveport Magazine, and believes that knowledgeable, engaged citizens are pivotal to shifting a community toward vibrancy and away from the status quo. LeVette volunteers for several community service and arts organizations, and thinks land use policy is a fun topic to bring up at parties.
Luke Lee
Founding Member
Luke Lee is a multi-disciplined designer, maker, and business owner who works with his clients to improve the local economy and health of the community through design thinking and action. Luke, his wife Britney, and son Bridger live in the Highland Neighborhood of Shreveport and have been active in improving the neighborhood and connecting neighbors through the creation of and involvement with many organizations in the neighborhood.
Luke is a Shreveport native and has become dedicated to making the city a better place to live while becoming a leader in innovative practices.
Chris Lyon
Founding Member, Board Treasurer
Chris is a filmmaker and community advocate who has called Shreveport home for over 25 years. He is also a program director at the Prize Foundation, an organization that creates unconventional economic development programs which incentivizes Creative Entrepreneurship in Shreveport and Louisiana more broadly. Chris primarily focuses his energy improving the cultural and built environments in the core of Shreveport — particularly downtown where he resides.
He has produced several documentary films, the docuseries Shape of Shreveport, which featured insights into Shreveport’s history, the Rational Middle which creates videos on difficult subjects such as energy, environment, immigration and other political topics to find common ground on contentious challenges facing the United States.
Lyon previously helmed the local Heliopolis magazine (2014-2018) and is also a graphic artist and creates a variety of digital and physical products to further the understanding of ReForm Shreveport’s core principles.