Small towns lose their most important resources one by one. People. It happens in many ways. The children leave first. Small towns lack the number of youths to justify a school. If education was the principal point, communities could hold onto the little ones. A one or two-room schoolhouse isn’t the most absurd concept.
But in today’s society, we tend to combine these small towns for the sake of sports. There are additional benefits as well: art, foreign language, band, music, and other electives. The problem is that those little children build a loyalty to the town where they receive their education. It moves them one step away from their hometown.
The pull of education takes the little ones farther away after graduation. The brightest or most ambitious head off to university and trade school. They get a taste of what these larger towns can offer, things like a variety of foods, coffee shops, part-time jobs, shopping, and a greater sense of belonging: a larger community.
Next stop in life: full-time employment. College-bound or not, these young adults will need full-time jobs once they complete their formal education. Where do they go to find these jobs? The big city. Some obtain a position within their original small town, some in the place where they went to school, but most head off to a big city or even a metropolis.
The larger the city, the more expensive the cost of living. The higher the wage you can make, the more likely you will be able to pay off their debt. The best and the brightest leave their small town unless they can carve out a niche business that allows them to stay. And another small town grows smaller. Debt-strapped individuals often push off having children, which lowers the birth rate, creating a stagnant or reduced population, a whole other issue.
Other things have also contributed to the downfall of the small town. When the trains stopped coming, so did commerce and relevance for many remote little towns. Being on the train line didn’t matter anymore. Your position on the interstate made or broke your little town. The highway could save you. Two-lane paved highways make transporting goods and people way easier. A good road can help keep a small town alive if the route is optimal.
What else kills a small town? The death of industry. A town can thrive with a single manufacturing business. When those businesses moved offshore, it destroyed so many small towns. Sometimes, the old business won’t sell the building and land, hindering a new business from taking over. But most of the time, there isn’t another business willing to open up in the middle of nowhere.
The lack of residence in a small town prevents businesses from even considering those towns. Who wants to start a business in a tiny community where the bar is the only other business besides a church? Who wants to move to a small town when the nearest shopping center is half an hour away?
So, how can small towns be revitalized? Recruiting and investment. There are three main recruitment tools for the isolated small town. First, the internet provides a new road for commerce. If someone can work from home, they don’t need to live near the big city. Remote work means individuals can move out of the city and into a small town. Second, find an individual with an idea and invest as long as they establish the business in a small town. Some business ideas will work better than others since some businesses require foot traffic to survive. Third, convince an existing business to open a facility in the small town.
The people will desire accommodations, and businesses need consumers and employees. Recruiters will need to entice people to move into these small towns. To bring in the people, you need houses, a restaurant, a grocery store, shops, social clubs, etc. To build these, you will need capital investments.
How can we revitalize small-town America? By actively courting businesses and people and then investing in what those businesses and people need to thrive.
