Isabelle O'Toole

Isabelle O'Toole joined the Small Cities Lab as a student, leading an oral and material history project for the Alley House Program in partnership with the City of Bethlehem. She interviewed Alley House residents spanning three generations of the typology's use and conducted zoning research into Bethlehem's code history to build the case for reform. She returned to the Lab as a Research Fellow following her graduation from Lehigh's English department in 2024.

Isabelle is the project manager for Faith & Home, a partnership between the Lehigh Conference of Churches and the Allentown Collaborative Ministries that explores how declining congregations, facing shrinking membership and vacant buildings, can introduce housing on their properties while maintaining community and worship spaces. The initiative is building a new model of living together that challenges traditional, developer-driven approaches. Isabelle leads coordination across the coalition's partners and uses narrative-based methods to support congregations through discernment, as well as the political and regulatory hurdles that come with mixed-use development.

In addition to Faith & Home, Isabelle leads collaborative events and storytelling initiatives across the Lab. She co-organized and facilitated the inaugural Small Cities Co-Lab in Fall 2025, convening more than 70 policymakers, city officials, architects, planners, nonprofit leaders, and academics from across the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and Midwest. She authored the accompanying five-part booklet series and facilitated four webinars, extending the convening's themes to a wider audience.

Isabelle also developed Small City Stories, conducting interviews to develop original stories and postcards that document people and places across Pennsylvania. The project has grown into a public archive that challenges reductive narratives of small cities as sites of decline or resurgence that affect residents' sense of place.