Jane Jacobs is to the city as ???? is to the town.
April 21, 2007 7:53 AM Subscribe
What research has been done into making a healthy small town community?
Who has studied what makes for a good small town? I'm looking for the Jane Jacobs of the country village.
I'm not sure I'm wording this very well but any suggestions would be appreciated.
Who has studied what makes for a good small town? I'm looking for the Jane Jacobs of the country village.
I'm not sure I'm wording this very well but any suggestions would be appreciated.
Colin Ward, famed UK town and country planner and anarchist (honest) touches on these issues in his work, including the highly regarded The Child in the Country. Can't find much by him online, other than this slightly relevant book review.
posted by Abiezer at 10:25 AM on April 21, 2007
posted by Abiezer at 10:25 AM on April 21, 2007
Actually, looking at the stuff on the RA forums, Anarchy in Milton Keynes might be of interest too.
posted by Abiezer at 10:29 AM on April 21, 2007
posted by Abiezer at 10:29 AM on April 21, 2007
I'd suggest looking into the work of Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk on New Urbanism. They focus on smaller town planning. Two examples include Seaside, Florida and Prospect New Town in Colorado.
Christopher Alexander did write about small town and regional patterns in A Pattern Language, but they weren't his focus. A couple other books that touch on the subject: The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler and Suburban Nation by Duany and Plater-Zyberk.
posted by Jeff Howard at 10:32 AM on April 21, 2007
Christopher Alexander did write about small town and regional patterns in A Pattern Language, but they weren't his focus. A couple other books that touch on the subject: The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler and Suburban Nation by Duany and Plater-Zyberk.
posted by Jeff Howard at 10:32 AM on April 21, 2007
This is precisely what my old non-profit used to specialize in when I lived in Nebraska (The Heartland Center). It seems small communities all over the country are having a hard time sustaining themselves, but nowhere is this more evident than in the small towns that make up the Great Plains.
In a nutshell, there are four key ingredients to revitalizing (or sustaining) a small community. Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Youth, and Community Giving. None of the ingredients are more important than the other—they work together in a kind of feedback loop.
In Nebraska, the average population of a town was less than a thousand people. The problem was simply that the kids would leave and not come back. It wasn't that they didn't want to come back, but that the people in the town were actually telling them, effectively, you need to leave to become successful, and those that come back have failed in some way. Precisely the wrong attitude to sustain the population.
Further, the children that later wanted to come back (cheaper housing, safer neighborhoods, tighter communities) couldn't afford to raise families without jobs. But a lot of the companies that were based in-town ended up selling interests to larger corporations, or simply went out of business because a Wal-Mart would open 100 miles away (seriously). It's not that these businesses weren't good models, but that they needed a little extra to compete head-to-head with the larger out-of-state entities.
This is where community giving comes into play. The saying in the midwest was that they were "land rich, cash poor." So what we tried to do was convince the people who lived in town, people who were born and raised there and loved their communities—but who's children had left to other states and bigger cities—to contribute a percentage of their estate to community organizations in their will. It didn't have to be a huge amount to make a difference. This "community giving" can then be used as seed capital for new businesses, or can be used to clean up a Main St. to attract new business, etc., etc. But you need to first convince the local population of two things: first, that there's a serious problem, and second, that it can be overcome. That's where you need strong community leaders.
There are a ton of studies and writings available from the Heartland Center's website; they also have annual institutes held around the country where they talk in much more detail about strategies. They used to (and probably still do) work with the Center for Rural Entrepreneurship and the Nebraska Community Foundation, where I'm sure you'll find a ton more information.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 3:07 PM on April 21, 2007
In a nutshell, there are four key ingredients to revitalizing (or sustaining) a small community. Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Youth, and Community Giving. None of the ingredients are more important than the other—they work together in a kind of feedback loop.
In Nebraska, the average population of a town was less than a thousand people. The problem was simply that the kids would leave and not come back. It wasn't that they didn't want to come back, but that the people in the town were actually telling them, effectively, you need to leave to become successful, and those that come back have failed in some way. Precisely the wrong attitude to sustain the population.
Further, the children that later wanted to come back (cheaper housing, safer neighborhoods, tighter communities) couldn't afford to raise families without jobs. But a lot of the companies that were based in-town ended up selling interests to larger corporations, or simply went out of business because a Wal-Mart would open 100 miles away (seriously). It's not that these businesses weren't good models, but that they needed a little extra to compete head-to-head with the larger out-of-state entities.
This is where community giving comes into play. The saying in the midwest was that they were "land rich, cash poor." So what we tried to do was convince the people who lived in town, people who were born and raised there and loved their communities—but who's children had left to other states and bigger cities—to contribute a percentage of their estate to community organizations in their will. It didn't have to be a huge amount to make a difference. This "community giving" can then be used as seed capital for new businesses, or can be used to clean up a Main St. to attract new business, etc., etc. But you need to first convince the local population of two things: first, that there's a serious problem, and second, that it can be overcome. That's where you need strong community leaders.
There are a ton of studies and writings available from the Heartland Center's website; they also have annual institutes held around the country where they talk in much more detail about strategies. They used to (and probably still do) work with the Center for Rural Entrepreneurship and the Nebraska Community Foundation, where I'm sure you'll find a ton more information.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 3:07 PM on April 21, 2007
The answer in Europe (and implied in C_D's answer about the US) is "subsidies," honestly. A lot of small towns in the US exist in large part due to transfer payments of various kinds (from welfare, to pensions, to farm subsidies, etc etc); in Europe the subsidies are much larger and the small towns are doing better, at least in terms of being able to sustain their physical infrastructure.
There is no Jane Jacobs of small towns, really -- the New Urbanists come close, although much of that work is focused on building (or rebuilding) new urbanist communities within larger metropolitan areas, and can be easily criticized for their idealization of a never-existant Norman Rockwell-esque prelapsarian paradise. Some of the older authors, from perhaps the early 1800s to the early 20th century, really fetishize small town America as the bedrock of democracy and community (I think you would include Tocqueville in that, but I haven't reread him in a very long time). But the real reason there isn't a Jane Jacobs of small towns is that the US has very few of them, compared to a country like Mexico or much of Europe. Look at a map of the US, especially outside of the northeast -- there are actually very few "places," compare to all that space. So as a percentage of total population, not many people in the US live in small towns and villages that are not part of a larger metro area. Culturally, their decline is a big deal (a lot of our literature, music, and so on are based in small town life), but not all that many people are directly affected by their decline.
There are a lot of people writing about this, of course, particularly in terms of decline: rustbelt communities, the great plains, areas around closed military bases, etc. Googling terms like "small town survival" will give you a sense of the intense interest in this topic, but will also indicate that a) there is no perfect strategy, and b) anything that can be done at the local level is done in the context of a larger system that is channeling resources (including cultural resources such as bright young people) away from small towns and towards metro areas like Chicago, LA, and London. The resources that can be mobilized at the local level are really limited, compared to the massive resources that are mobilized to, say, build a new military base, or in a national highway or farm bill, or that a multinational company can access. The scales of possibility are so different that I just can't see an effective response coming from one community at a time -- you would need a national "small places" policy.
(As an aside, we have effectively had such "small places" policies at various times -- the locating of land grant universities in small, rural towns was a deliberate attempt to reverse the centralization of resources into large cities, for example. So this can be done, but it isn't cheap, and isn't easy.)
posted by Forktine at 4:23 AM on April 22, 2007 [1 favorite]
There is no Jane Jacobs of small towns, really -- the New Urbanists come close, although much of that work is focused on building (or rebuilding) new urbanist communities within larger metropolitan areas, and can be easily criticized for their idealization of a never-existant Norman Rockwell-esque prelapsarian paradise. Some of the older authors, from perhaps the early 1800s to the early 20th century, really fetishize small town America as the bedrock of democracy and community (I think you would include Tocqueville in that, but I haven't reread him in a very long time). But the real reason there isn't a Jane Jacobs of small towns is that the US has very few of them, compared to a country like Mexico or much of Europe. Look at a map of the US, especially outside of the northeast -- there are actually very few "places," compare to all that space. So as a percentage of total population, not many people in the US live in small towns and villages that are not part of a larger metro area. Culturally, their decline is a big deal (a lot of our literature, music, and so on are based in small town life), but not all that many people are directly affected by their decline.
There are a lot of people writing about this, of course, particularly in terms of decline: rustbelt communities, the great plains, areas around closed military bases, etc. Googling terms like "small town survival" will give you a sense of the intense interest in this topic, but will also indicate that a) there is no perfect strategy, and b) anything that can be done at the local level is done in the context of a larger system that is channeling resources (including cultural resources such as bright young people) away from small towns and towards metro areas like Chicago, LA, and London. The resources that can be mobilized at the local level are really limited, compared to the massive resources that are mobilized to, say, build a new military base, or in a national highway or farm bill, or that a multinational company can access. The scales of possibility are so different that I just can't see an effective response coming from one community at a time -- you would need a national "small places" policy.
(As an aside, we have effectively had such "small places" policies at various times -- the locating of land grant universities in small, rural towns was a deliberate attempt to reverse the centralization of resources into large cities, for example. So this can be done, but it isn't cheap, and isn't easy.)
posted by Forktine at 4:23 AM on April 22, 2007 [1 favorite]
I second (third?) Christopher Alexander: extraordinary writing, pragmatic and provocative.
posted by waxbanks at 4:23 AM on April 22, 2007
posted by waxbanks at 4:23 AM on April 22, 2007
Response by poster: Thanks for all these great suggestions. I will definitely be digging into each of them further. A Pattern Language is maybe more focused on architecture and design than I am but looks like a fascinating book nonetheless. Colin Ward hits the closest to home when he said, "the grown-up children of local families can't get on the housing ladder" (from the Guardian article).
I guess there are a range of different issues a small town faces from no cash, no jobs and local people leaving to a lot of cash coming in from outside, a lot of jobs, but with local people being pushed out. I live in a successful small town with plenty of money being spread around but it has a definite feeling of hopelessness among the locals relegated to lawn care and booze.
posted by bobobox at 5:34 AM on April 22, 2007
I guess there are a range of different issues a small town faces from no cash, no jobs and local people leaving to a lot of cash coming in from outside, a lot of jobs, but with local people being pushed out. I live in a successful small town with plenty of money being spread around but it has a definite feeling of hopelessness among the locals relegated to lawn care and booze.
posted by bobobox at 5:34 AM on April 22, 2007
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by jayder at 8:05 AM on April 21, 2007