The Inherent Sustainability of the Small Town
The death of the small town has been widely exaggerated. On the contrary, small towns are thriving just as they have for decades, in perfect balance. Population is steady, infrastructure is sufficient, all goods and services required are available, and it is rarely more than 25 miles to the nearest Wally World– an outing everyone enjoys. There is very little unemployment; kids know that they will either take over the family farm or business or that they will have to seek their futures elsewhere, or some combination of working elsewhere until family concerns or opportunities call them back.
This model has functioned beautifully since…well, since forever, in one form or another. The wealthy Roman’s latifundia had workers who produced everything in what was virtually a small city needed from food to harnesses, from wine to clothing, or traded for what could not be grown or manufactured. The same was true on feudal estates during the Dark Ages; the serfs produced, using the local Baron’s resources, what was needed to sustain life and such comforts as the period afforded.
Just as England was getting too crowded, the colonies provided room for the expanding population to move to an area that offered living room. Germany has been seeking “lebensraum,” which means the same thing, for centuries. In general America was settled by westward expansion as each area reached sustainable population. When the land and population reached a good balance the more adventurous or those wanting more than was available moved on. The main thing wrong with earth is that interplanetary travel has not evolved! Malthus was right, although it is taking longer than he expected, and government land grabs have tied up vast chunks suitable for establishing new self-sufficient social units.
It is only in the last hundred years that vast metroplexes have sprawled across America breeding crime and problems that never existed before. Instead of the increased population becoming self-sufficient in small cohesive groups, as had been the norm since colonial days, people now huddle in cities selling things to each other.
Is the salvation of America deactivating urban and suburban sprawl in a vast migration to the country? That “solution” simply will not work: the housing is not there, the jobs are not there, the schools and water systems are not sufficient, and room for gentle growth is not there. If it were, the young would not go off to the big cities. Starting a small town from scratch isn’t plausible, either.
The usual small town of about 2500 has two grocery stores, two feed stores, a couple of veterinarians, a “good” restaurant, a burger joint and a Mexican restaurant, a beauty shop, a lawyer or three, an insurance agent, a hardware store, and a pharmacy. You might find a nail salon and a movie house that is open Friday and Saturday nights. It can’t absorb many newcomers because everything is already in balance, sufficient for the needs of the area, but neither lacking nor needing to expand.
Has spreading the sprawl to the country on purpose been tried? Yes, it has. Consider Roundrock, a charming little Texas town until a very few years ago when Dell decided to locate there to build computers. It would be easy to get excited and think of a large corporation bringing new jobs, new commerce, and an increased tax base, envisioning a gentle absorption process whereby the Dell people became part of the community and the indigenous population benefited from increased trade opportunities.
WERE new jobs created? Yes, jobs were brought in but personnel was imported to fill them. Very few of the jobs were available to locals.
Well, there had to be an increase in commerce, didn’t there? Absolutely. The new workers and management needed housing, groceries, gasoline, and some professional services such as a CPA or title company. However, this did not lead to expansion by established businesses in the area; like Ford deciding there was a 5% market niche for the Edsel, Chili’s et al. decided Roundrock was now big enough (or was becoming big enough) to justify opening franchises. Local restaurants did not see a vast influx of customers. In very short order Roundrock has become indistinguishable from New Braunfels or San Marcos (absorbed as the ‘burbs reach out from San Antonio towards Austin, and vice versa) or innumerable small towns in the DFW area that have been surrounded and overrun. Large chain grocers moved in, rather than the newcomers patronizing Godwin’s and Brookshire Brothers. An army of ants dumped “civilization” on a nice place to live in very short order, and very soon afterwards it stopped being a nice place to live.
Housing? Oh, yes. The newcomers have their own–”ghetto” is too harsh–enclave where the sort of housing they are accustomed to is being built. There are now billboards advertising “homes from the 110′s to the 190′s!” in an area where the median house value was more on the order of $50,000. The newcomers huddle together in their own separate area, doing their own separate things…and criticize how Roundrock is and most residents would much have prefered it to stay.
“They said this was progress and to live with it,” a small business owner said in angry frustration. “I told them to progress elsewhere!”
The newcomers have banded together and are running their own candidates locally! An office seeker whose slogan is “efficient…sustainable…environmentally friendly” is not the descendant of those who have lived in Roundrock since 1843. (That phrase, with “green” for the last clause is to be found in the G-20 report, a classic of the C. North Parkinson school which was written before the meeting took place and is couched in such terms that the few who were responsible for content can claim it covers anything they want to do, and then claim success, in the unlikely event they have any.) Roundrock was actually living that way and didn’t need outsiders clamoring for new services to solve problems expansion brought.
Locals are bitter over losing a quarter-mile swath of prime farmland to build the large highway Dell requires to do business. The land is gone, fields are cut up badly, and all the long time residents get out of it is increased traffic (they had been blissfully ignorant of rush hour traffic heretofore) from a lot of people they didn’t want there in the first place.
For the most part there will be two Roundrocks from now on: the old guard, and the newcomers. They have almost nothing in common and little to cooperate on even if either side wanted to. The Dellians want to recreate the cities from which they came, and the Roundrockians for the most part want the good old days back. They can’t have it.
“Increased tax base!” proponents might cry. “What about THAT? You can’t deny that there is more tax money to do good.” Ah…that’s one of the major problems. The big city’s idea of “good” isn’t that of the local populace, and the problems the Dellians want to solve weren’t problems until they got there. Worse, there are now or will be big, new bond issues to fund increased school facilities, a hospital, expansion of water lines (bear in mind that Roundrock is bordering on the Hill Country and water is in less supply than areas with more rainfall), and buses. There aren’t in bus routes in small town America because they are neither needed nor wanted! Bureaucracy is on the rise, of course, which will necessitate more building and more taxes. A large sign urges donating because “There were 558 cases of child abuse here last year! Five children died.” Old Roundrock didn’t have child abuse.
Dell built an arena/stadium/gathering center…which the newcomers no doubt enjoy. Small town Roundrock was perfectly happy watching the kids play baseball, football, and soccer outdoors and basketball in the school gym. Watching the kids play is far more thrilling to small town dwellers than the Super Bowl is. Utter excitement is having the HS football team make it to the playoffs even if the division is AA.
A financial professional weighed in, “Yes, I have some new clients, but it isn’t worth what it cost us having Dell here.” It isn’t, either. Dell won by getting cheaper land and a lower cost of living that their presence will raise, and it was downhill from there.
Those who work for Dell got a chance to see how the other half lives and didn’t want any part of it. They want their strip malls, big movie theaters, and all the comforts of their former cities. They tend to be contemptuous of the locals and “life in the sticks.” Perhaps that means they want a tattoo parlor and a porn bookstore, but it also conveys that they aren’t comfortable with life in the slow lane. They don’t understand an unhurried lifestyle and think Roundrockians need stirring up to become “useful members of society.” The long-time residents still think low crime, low unemployment, traditional schools (ever harder to hold on to), helping their neighbors because they want to, and a stable, “efficient” and “sustainable” life are what America is all about. They already had those.
The locals lost most of all. Against their will, their traditional lifestyle is being destroyed. They have to fight traffic, hunt for parking places, stand in lines, hear what they were proud of denigrated, and attempt to battle the “progress” the invaders are determined to have. Chances are the kids are whining, “Jimmy has…” and “Susie’s mom lets her…”
They’re back to the same old issue that has plagued mankind since the Saxons and the Normans: those who are tied to the land and their communities, and those who believe in conquest and commerce. Big government vs. small, a leisurely life vs. the rat race, the “good” of anonymous, idle others vs. standing on our own two feet and offering a deserving neighbor an occasional steadying hand.
If you get a chance, visit Roundrock while the flavor is still there. The natives are friendly, sensible, and outgoing. If you are able, find a similar small town and move there yourself.
Just don’t take a corporation with you.
Regards,
Linda Brady Traynham
April 10, 2009
Linda Brady Traynham
Linda Brady Traynham is a former editor and analytical project report writer and is now a Whiskey & Gunpowder field correspondent on a ranch in the Republic of Texas. She studied Counseling at Boston University and got her Masters degree in Philosophy from the University of Hawaii.
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The small town really is a plausible answer to sustainable human living.
We won’t go gently into that particular good night, however.
The megalopolises around the world are the very picture of overshoot. They can’t be dismantled and their populations can’t just be absorbed into more sustainable modes of town and country life.
No use crying about it now, though.
These are interesting time in which we live, no? Resource depletion, energy scarcity and the attendant collapse of debt and the unsustainable growth it promoted…what a stew!
Stay tuned as we try to navigate our way through, Shooters.
The weather seems finally to have turned pleasant in Baltimore. I plan to enjoy my weekend. You do the same.
Regards,
Gary Gibson,
Managing Editor, Whiskey & Gunpowder
Great article Linda!!
You could change just a few things and it would fit “Walmart comes to town” in Goodland,KS or elsewhere and watching the Main Streets close down. Also, what’s happened to any small mountain or ski town in Colorado. Moving prisons into small rural communites and on and on and on!!
Ya, gotta feel for the locals, but I guess that’s what we call progress????
What the author fails to mention is that Round Rock is 10 minutes from downtown Austin via I-35. The growth in Round Rock is partially due to sprawl from Austin and can’t be pinned on one company alone. Dell has done more good for Round Rock/Austin than any old timer RR citizen has-ever. I’m sure the thousands of children at Dell Children’s hospital will agree. Also, the 45, I-35 expansion is due to increased traffic heading into Austin and not Round Rock. When Dell moved here, the rancher’s sold their land at a premium and no one held a gun to their head’s.
I am glad that Dell is here now. The Austin tech economy is not doing all that well, but at least there are jobs here now. Austin is doing very well for as much doom and gloom that is being reported. Dell has been here for over 10 years now. The author makes it sound like that the locals “all of a sudden” couldn’t find parking spaces and started standing in lines. I guess he means at the Round Rock Express baseball stadium “Dell Diamond” that Dell built for this area?
Texas is a big state – anyone who thinks that progress will not hit an area around the I-35 interstate needs a lesson in modern economics. My advice: Move to del Rio, Junction, Wimberly, etc. Round Rock sold out a long time ago, friend.
Dear Don:
Thanks for the comment, and I agree. NIMBY!
Walmart is a great thing to have about 25 miles away for those few things that small towns cannot provide, and there aren’t many, particularlly in these days of e-Bay, Craig’s List, and on-line shopping. Another hazard is that with the current round of store closings and bankruptcies–which can only grow worse–what happens when the bean counters decide any particular Walmart isn’t profiitable enough and shuts it down? You can’t just revive the local hardware store, drugstore, and mom and pop grocery that were driven out of business overnight.
The same holds true of small ski resorts, which cannot compete against larger areas. Their fault, for diversifying into tourists?
Amen on the prison situation! My personal solution is to outsource prisons to Mexico, where a survivor emerges (if at all) with a strong incentive never to return. Why should we endanger our people and spend the equivalent of an expensive college education on felons each year, when Mexico would probably be thrilled to have the business for, say, ten dollars a day? Twenty, for sure. I can’t see any good reason, although it would help if the demand to legalize at least marijuana were implemented. No, of course I don’t use “recreational” drugs, unless you count a menthol cigarette and a nice, chilled glass of lambrusco. However, something like half of those incarcerated are there on minor drug charges, busy learning criminal ways, having closed innumerable doors to a better future. This isn’t good for them or us.
All of this goes together. We have too many people, too few of them supporting themselves in any way, and a government determined to make being self-sufficient ever more difficult.
If you’re in Kansas you have additional problems, based on my experience living in Derby when John was with Boeing. Great farmland, but golly, there aren’t six weeks out of the year when it isn’t too hot, too cold, and/or too windy to be outdoors! It wouldn’t be a great place to live without electricity–as many found in the tornadoes of the summer of 1990–and if (as I hope) you have looked into such things as generators and fuel, you can see that accumulating enough diesel or propane to last six months or a year isn’t a viable solution for most of us. Even with stabilizers gasoline (also expensive and requiring costly tanks to store) isn’t good for more than a year or so; without them, in six months you have an interesting flammable substance that will not run internal combustion engines. There aren’t enough trees to talk about, so a fireplace isn’t a good solution to your heating problem. We burned–literally!–an enormous tree over 75 years old that finally blew down this year over a very mild winter. At grocery store prices Charles has a $75/day habit, and we use the fireplace primarily for comfort and beauty, not for heating.
I would love to hear what preparations you are making for the problems we foresee, because I have been haunted for the last year and a half by thoughts that I have overlooked something that will be “obvious” when social order breaks down. This isn’t going to be like Christmas when nobody thought to buy all sorts of batteries just in case someone sent a toy that requires them. If it all goes down–or up in flames–as badly as it could, what you have may be all there is for a dangerously long time. LBT
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Dear Eric:
Thanks for your input! I admit cheerfully that I only spoke to “locals” and not to anyone on the other team, since it was an up and back business trip. I’m handicapped by not having “rich text,” so I’ll respond in all caps.
You wrote: “What the author fails to mention is that Round Rock is 10 minutes from downtown Austin via I-35. The growth in Round Rock is partially due to sprawl from Austin and can’t be pinned on one company alone. THE FACT REMAINS THAT OLD RR DIDN’T HAVE HOUSES IN THE 190′S. Dell has done more good for Round Rock/Austin than any old timer RR citizen has-ever. GOOD BY WHOSE STANDARDS? I’M CURIOUS, NOT DEMEANING. WHAT HAS CHANGED THAT IMPROVED RR? THE THREE PEOPLE I DID BUSINESS WITH OR TALKED TO CERTAINLY DIDN’T AGREE! ONE, AS NOTED, WAS A SMALL BUSINESS OWNER AND ONE WAS A CPA. I’m sure the thousands of children at Dell Children’s hospital will agree. THERE WEREN’T THOUSANDS OF CHILDREN THAT NEEDED HOSPITALIZATION BACK IN THE OLD DAYS. IF, AS YOU SAY (AND OF COURSE I BELIEVE YOU) IT IS ONLY TEN MINUTES TO AUSTIN, SEEMS TO ME THERE ARE JUST A FEW HOSPITALS THERE. ST. DAVID’S, FOR ONE… Also, the 45, I-35 expansion is due to increased traffic heading into Austin and not Round Rock. HOW INTERESTING. WHERE IS IT COMING FROM, AND WHY? When Dell moved here, the rancher’s sold their land at a premium and no one held a gun to their head’s. VERY TRUE. IF YOU OWN LAND, IS IT EASIER TO SELL NOW THAN IT WAS BEFORE? ARE YOUR TAXES HIGHER OR LOWER?
I am glad that Dell is here now. ARE YOU A NEWCOMER OR AN OLD TIMER, JUST OUT OF CURIOSITY? The Austin tech economy is not doing all that well, but at least there are jobs here now. Austin is doing very well for as much doom and gloom that is being reported. Dell has been here for over 10 years now. The author makes it sound like that the locals “all of a sudden” couldn’t find parking spaces and started standing in lines. SORRY, DIDN’T MEAN TO CONVEY THAT, JUST THAT A ONCE PEACEFUL, SLEEPY LITTLE TOWN IS NOW UNDER THE STRESS OF BEING STRICKEN WITH WHAT SOME OF US THINK IS URBAN BLIGHT. I guess he means at the Round Rock Express baseball stadium “Dell Diamond” that Dell built for this area? HE’S A SHE, AND YES, I NOTICED THE NEW STADIUM. I ALSO SAW HAPPY PARENTS WATCHING THE KIDS PLAY SOCCER OUTDOORS.
Texas is a big state – anyone who thinks that progress will not hit an area around the I-35 interstate needs a lesson in modern economics. I CANNOT DO BETTER THAN QUOTE MADAM X WHO SAID, “LET THEM PROGRESS SOMEWHERE ELSE!”
My advice: Move to del Rio, Junction, Wimberly, etc. Round Rock sold out a long time ago, friend.” DEL RIO IS HOTTER’N HADES, HAS FLOODS OCCASIONALLY, AND IS ON THE BORDER, NOT A SAFE PLACE TO BE, ALTHOUGH CIUDAD ACUNA USED TO BE A DELIGHTFUL PLACE. I HAVE RELATIVES AND FRIENDS THERE. I ADORE JUNCTION, WHERE THE LOCAL EPISCOPAL PRIEST IS A CLOSE FRIEND AND THEY HAVE THE GREATEST PIE MAKER IN TEXAS. DON’T KNOW ABOUT WIMBERLY, BUT THANKS FOR THE TIP. i HAVE A FEELING IT IS UP SOMEWHERE AROUND OKLAHOMA?
I HAD AN INTERESTING DISCUSSION TODAY WITH SOMEONE FROM A TOWN WHERE ALCOA CLOSED DOWN A PLANT RECENTLY. THE GENTLEMAN IS DELIGHTED, NOTING THAT THERE HAS BEEN NO ECONOMIC BLIGHT AND LIFE ROCKS ALONG VERY NICELY WITHOUT THEM. BACK TO REAL TEXT. This, obviously, is a very personal choice we all must make taking into consideration our personal resources, preferences, means of supporting ourselves, and opinions on the future. I was responding to those who think small towns are dying and can’t imagine why anyone would move to one. I think my point remains valid, that for those who can find a small town untouched by “progress” AND have the ability to support themselves, dropping out of the rat race is a terrific thing to do in general and particularly important considering the current social, politica, financial, and economic chaos.
I’m reminded of a 50-year-old cartoon from The Saturday Evening Post, which showed a man with a drink in his hand saying to his wife, “You rumpus your way and I’ll rumpus mine!” It helps if you know that what is now usually referred to as a “family room” was called a “rumpus” room then. If you’re happy in RR as it is, friend, may you prosper and remain so. I’m going to keep on hunting a spread farther out and far more isolated, myself! LBT
Wonderful article Linda. It refelcts so much what has happend to small town America, not just Roundrock It is difficult to find a small town with the post office and the genral store as the center of town without a blinking conveneience store in the way. Will only get worse as the government spends money trying to shove broadband to every little crack and corner in the rural countryside.
The balance of small cities is not true. The population from small towns regularly immigrate to urban centers. You state it in the article: “It can’t absorb many newcomers because everything is already in balance, sufficient for the needs of the area, but neither lacking nor needing to expand.” If the children of small towns are moving to large cities then there is NO balance, the small town is idyllic because those people go elsewhere for work. If they had to stay home unemployment would be significantly greater, making life in the small town more unpleasant. The small town, similar to much of society, is unsustainable, the opposite of your point, but the myth lives on.
I’m living in Nicaragua where the fantasy is to develop a tourist industry to get money from the gringos charging prices equivalent to the US’s hotel industries and paying the locals maybe five to ten dollars a month more than the prevailing wages, which are in the $175 to $220 a month range for hotel workers. The fantasy is driving house prices and land prices up (fortunately in some cases beyond what the developers want to pay). Prices for houses are going up because people believe gringos with money are coming (most of the gringos here are not really that well off — Nicaragua is a bargain retirement spot because people poor but mostly reasonably honest, not because people work for nothing for expats.
I’m in a small city that works quite well as the supply center, market center, banking hub, and governmental capital for a agricultural hinterland. We’ve had a gringo developer plan a lakeside community that hasn’t been built on for over six years, with lots still for sale on time, for $12,000 to $30,000 US (something in the order of several time the average annual wage for at least half the people here. Last time I went buy, someone was pasturing cattle on the place. The web site claims it’s an hour and a half from Managua — more like three — and also claims a few other things than are dubious.
I think most people here would like more prosperity, but most studies show that tourism is money for a few and a lot of lower paid jobs for most.
If this rather nice place despite its shabby architecture and zinc fences ever develops in a way that makes more of the people here prosperous, I’m all for it, but most development from the outside tends to be inflationary and disruptive. The tourist areas of Nicaragua tend to have the more violent and confrontative crimes, more street begging (kids try here, but it’s not serious and people do help older people and known neighborhood homeless people), and more illegal hustles of various kinds.
With any of these places, I want things to be better for the people who had been living there, not to see the place swept clean or nearly clean of its original population, who created the place, and turned into something else. Some outsiders seem to be intriguing and welcome: here, the Chinese family who runs a shop, the Russian vet and her second Nicaraguan husband, various other expats who seem to fit in well enough, some with Nicaraguan spouses. Some aren’t. The planned gated community would be for people who want to be set off from locals who don’t have their money, their tastes, or their senses of color propriety (one of them suggested the city should paint over the FSLN street tags on street lights and electric utility poles “in neutral colors.”).
If the city finds ways to make most of its people more prosperous without causing housing and good inflation beyond a rise in wages, that’s really wonderful, but I’m suspicious that this isn’t what happens when the gated communities and big resort planners come to tow, any more than with the businesses who bring their own workers.