Small Town Renaissance

There’s just something about a small town that tugs at your heart and imagination. Perhaps it’s all those episodes of the Andy Griffith Show that made Mayberry a part of the American psyche whether you’ve watched them or not. It’s true that most people live in cities and suburbs, but across American there is an unmistakable trend of people seeking out smaller communities.

I’ve seen it repeatedly as I’ve traveled to one small town after another on assignment for one publication or another. Writing about these communities and in particular the resurgence that is so obvious in many communities is a joy.

Some of the greatest evidence of renewal can be found in the small and often historic downtowns that smart city leaders have focused on developing. In the (now distant) past, these areas were the focus of civic life and commerce. The Saturday trip into town for groceries and other shopping was a regular Saturday ritual when I was growing up outside the small Middle Georgia community of Eastman.

On its wide main street divided by rail tracks was virtually everything we needed. There was the pharmacy where I could  spend a happy hour thumbing through the latest comic books in their rotating carousel. The broad front windows that looked in upon an old fashioned soda counter. It was pleasure and also some pain as I knew that eventually I would have to select just one of the 12 cent treasures to take home with me.

Next door was a bakery which produced the most delicious brownies and doughnuts – rare treats for those growing up in rural Georgia.  Within a short walk was clothing shops, a hardware store, barber, one screen movie house, library, post office and of course the main reason for our trip – the Piggy Wiggly, the town’s one real grocery store.

Like many communities across America, its downtown was eviscerated  by the arrival of the strip shopping center and Wal-Mart. Most of these stores closed up. A few like the venerable Coleman Hardware have hung on by adapting. It’s wners realized that selling hammers and nails was not going to cut it. So they added a gift shop and soon expanded to become a JC Penny catalog ordering center, as well as, package shipping via UPS and FedEx. Eastman’s growing Hispanic population led to the establishment of a Western Union office with money wiring services.

Across the tracks the old movie theater [which burned along most of the block when I was a college freshman], reopened and closed again has turned to live shows and theatrical productions.

Small towns no longer feel inferior to their big city rivals. In fact there’s a certain air of contentment in not being the big city. Driving west of Atlanta on Interstate 20 is Douglas County. Not far from Hartsfield Jackson International Airport, this area has become something of a mangent for industry and busness – here you’ll find Google, the American Red Cross and a host of other companies large and small.

You’ll also find the flourishing small city of Douglasville (pop. 31,000). It’s main thoroughfare brings to mind a pre-World War town of single story brick buildings. While their original inhabidents have since fled to mall or the Interstate, many of these structures are now being occupied by new enterprises . Restaurants, service businesses, boutiques and a healthy dose of government offices (and public investments) are the kinds of businesses that do best in a newly revitalized city center. Being outside Atlanta is not a bad thing, according to Douglasville Mayor Harvey Persons, who has lived here almost four decades.

“I had a reporter call me to ask me how did we overcome being so far from Atlanta,” he says with some pride. “I told her I would be more than happy to show her the disadvantages that Atlanta was having from being so far from Douglasville.”

In the North Georgia community of Blue Ridge, a number of the shops in the downtown – and businesses – are run by refugees from the big city and corporate life. Here local merchants are also enjoying an upsurge in traffic and sales. This is a very different town than a few years ago when as one local put it “you could throw a ball down Main Street and never hit anybody.”

Where there had just been a few antique stores, nowadays, the city caters to just about any desire and taste. There are a wide variety of new restaurants, boutiques, and coffee shops.

You could make a case that most of this renaissance is being driven by those who have grown tired of the big city grind. Clearly, many of these newcomers are better educated and more affluent than the natives. While that sometimes creates an almost cliché friction, this infusion of new blood and ideas has greatly benefited rural America.

Retirees and corporate refugees have the money to live in small towns, which these days offer little in the way of employment. The younger generation is still moving to the city by all accounts.

It’s not clear how far this resurgence of small town life will actually go. Big cities make more sense from the perspective of jobs and efficiency. It could be that rural living will remain a novelty rather than an important and vibrant condition. Yet, some see small towns as the future of America.

There’s also evidence that the migration to rural areas is widening the division between urban and rural.  Increasingly, researchers are finding  that politics guide people’s decisions when they move — to a significant extent. The data shows that 67 percent of people who are “consistently liberal” want  urban or at least suburban communities, while 76 percent of “consistent conservatives” gravitate  to  more wide open spaces. And there’s a pretty smooth progression as you move along the political continuum between the two.

Author and New Urbanism proponent James Howard Kunstler sees traditional small cities and towns as the savior of life in a Post Peak Oil world. “…when our energy supply problems get worse, there will be wholesale demographic shifts to smaller cities and small towns, especially places that have some relationship with local food production, water power, and water transport. Our smaller cities and towns are intrinsically better scaled for future energy realities.”

Small towns have many attractions beyond the simple charm of a historic street and people who say hello when you pass them. Maybe you live in a small town or you’re a regular visitor. If so, what attractions have you found?