Are all small towns dying? Can you save a small town?

Social and cultural poverty is tightly linked to economic poverty. The U.S. Small Business Administration estimates that smaller retailers drive 44 percent of the economy. Allowing them to fail, writes Retail Dive, “would be a blow to the country’s general welfare.” The big, mass, and vertically integrated retailers are undoubtedly hurting. They st... See more

The rural population is declining, from more than half of the US population in 1910 to just 20% in 2010. The abandoned main streets show the wear and tear of an economy that has shifted away from rural people, and of public policy that has forgotten to pay attention.

In the Information Age, only cities that repay their upkeep with a high quality of life will stay viable. People at a distance won’t be obligated to subsidize them.

But these tasks of meaning making require the small town, precisely, not to change too fast. Meanwhile, we demand that such places upend their entire local economy as soon as their fragile node in the regional economy is disrupted, often by some far-off decision over which the town had no control. It’s impossible. A place will certainly be grumpy i... See more