[Location] The New Small Town?

Pops · Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 4:10 pm Post subject: Re: [Economics] New Retail

This thread isn’t very old but still along the lines of blurring city and country once again.
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Pixie · Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 4:14 pm Post subject: Re: Local Economies

Hey Pops,

If you haven't already, buy and view The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, which you can get from the Community Solutions website. It documents how Cuba converted quickly away from the Green Revolution after they lost all their oil imports from the USSR, and how they now produce something like 60% of their food from within the boundaries of their towns and cities.

I don't think we could do exactly the same thing all across North America, but I also think that we find it hard to imagine how much food we really could produce in our backyards, flat roofs and inside our homes, if we really, really had to. We just don't, because the supermarket is so easy in comparison.
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Pixie · Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 4:22 pm Post subject:

Pixie · Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 4:26 pm Post subject: Re: Local Economies

Pops · Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 5:43 pm Post subject: Re: Local Economies

I looked for but couldn’t find another thread where I waxed eloquent regarding the benefit that commuters and exurbanites have had lately on small towns.

My thoughts were commuters fueled up with cheap gas helped some small towns rebuild their crumbling infrastructures to an extent, propped up at least a portion of the local businesses and rejuvenated residential areas in the small towns. This perhaps has been a saving grace hidden in the cheap gas of the last 20 years.

People complain that America has become a nation of service business. Once upon a time most local businesses didn’t sell things as much as services – there wasn’t much to sell! Think barber, undertaker, blacksmith, hoteliers etc. of course there were bakers, restaurants, butchers etc as well.

At any rate, as the price of the commute rises and the seemingly inevitable Shrinking Economy emerges there will almost certainly be those in the bigger towns looking for work and those in the small towns looking to not drive 40 miles for a meal.
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patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1524

We have lived in small towns since 1953 Age 7) and seen the changes. I anticipate a wide variety of small solutions to the coming problems, especially in the small town areas. When heating oil price went up dramatically in the late 1970's, it seemed like our whole county converted to wood stoves in one season. It's a lot of work, and the insurance goes up, so many went back to other means. But it's happening again now.Alot of sawmills are nearly idle at the moment here, but the chainsaws are still going, cutting firewood again.

This county is 30 miles from Louisville, KY, right at the edge of feasible commuting distance. As jobs are lost in the city, the newbies mostly move back to town, taking lesser jobs that won't pay for the commute. So, we have less people to support in the county. Many who grew up here also found jobs here, mostly through local networking. We have lost 2 factories from a local flood a couple years back, but the local super market is expanding into a larger building. The economy here is slowing down generally. Lots of houses for sale and no buyers. But agriculture is going strong (grain prices are up) and even with a bad drought this year, farm stores do a brisk trade, and farm workers are scarce.

As energy gets more scarce, a few will find out that the giveaway horses (available now due to a hay shortage) could be used for garden work, and small time logging, as they were long ago. Locals already share much of the Amish lifestyle, which I'm sure will increase. These people buy burger at the Wal Mart, but if things are tight, they'll go kill something and eat it....

The farmers market is healthy, and gardens were more in evidence the past year. The local median income is around $8 to $10/hr., and people seem to do okay with that. Laundry hangs on clotheslines because it's cheap to do. We don't have quite as far to fall as, say Louisville does. Many here can cope with a lot less.

The great number of new restaurants will disappear, but the used furniture store will do fine, the feed mill, and the car mechanics. The nail salons will go away, but the barbers will make it. It's already happening here, like it always does in a down turn. The town contracts a bit, but it keeps going.

Pops

Hi Patience, I don’t think we have talked - thanks for posting.

Have you seen any improvements or even stabilization in your town infrastructure or local business over the last years from commuters?
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patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1524

Hello Pops, not sure if I understand, but will do the best I can.

We have seen some new growth, but not the best kind. It has been the fast food and cheap new house sort of thing. The core of the town, though, is solid. There have been lasting improvements to the fairgrounds, city streets, a new city office building and fire dept. renovation. One major highway has been rebuilt (past our place, which hurt our business for a year). One of our water reservoirs got some sorely needed repairs, along with the sewage treatment plant.

This was to some degree based on boom times and a larger tax base of new residents who commute to the city. A lot of it was financed by grants from the state, again, due to boom times. But that is slowing down, as the economy contracts, which it does here ahead of many areas.

My repair shop customers include some of the city utilities, who tell me that money is tight for the city, county, and state. There is a local govt. policy to quote local sources first for their needs. That is reinforced by the small town tendency to take care of their own, via local networking, a self-preservation tactic for the town. It has worked for a long time, but the town is clearly in retrenchment mode now.

Wisely, I believe, the county has put a lot of money into improving the county roads, a benefit that will outlast some of the commuters. They have also successfully defeated an attempt to hijack our trash removal business by a huge, politically connected trash hauler, who tried to lobby the state to close our landfill. (They wanted the contract to haul the trash elsewhere.) Result was positive, with the landfill seeing improvements.

It's a poor county, but it is solvent and knows how to endure. Crime is low, and mostly petty theft, very little of the worst sort. Not a bad place to be, all considered!

Pops

Exactly what I was looking for. I have seen the same in my short time here as well, the nearby town is the county seat but only has about 4k inhabitants. It is far enough away from larger towns 40mi or so it didn’t get a huge influx of commuters but enough to pay for a new school, court building, sewer and power grid upgrades, etc.
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