It's been a couple years since I've written
anything new in this series of "Saving Small Towns"
essays. Partly it's been because I've been busy on other projects.
Mostly it's been that I've become discouraged -- discouraged,
and increasingly uncertain about the whole concept of preserving
and protecting what we used to consider the characteristics and
values of smaller towns and rural communities. Here's my problem:
It seems like smaller communities are becoming
just like big communities, only smaller. To put it a little less
obtusely: small towns are looking more and more like what we call
"neighborhoods" in the Big City. Every neighborhood
is a mini-reflection of its parent city; each has everything that
the bigger community has, except maybe the main city administrative
offices. Buy food; eat out; buy a car; repair a car; buy plumbing
supplies; rent a plumber; get 200 TV channels; go to the doctor;
go to school - all almost within walking distance. (Of course,
we don't walk; we drive.) We hardly have to visit The City (or
Downtown, as we call it) at all. It's better not to leave the
neighborhood, anyway, because every neighborhood is the identical
twin of all the others. You could get lost in the wrong one, and
never find your way home, again. To me, more and more small towns
and rural communities are looking like neighborhoods. All they
lack is the Big City surrounding them -- and maybe the traffic
jams, although that is changing, too.
Now, you may not think it's bad that our
small places have become small big places -- and maybe it isn't,
if that's what you're looking for. But when I see a town in the
New Hampshire North County that looks just like a town in rural
Ohio (except for the hills, or lack thereof) that looks just like
a town in California's Central Valley (except the latter has fewer
trees and no snow), it seems to me we need to consider again just
what it is we're "saving."
So, let's ask the question: when you think about "saving" your small community, what do you envision? Does it have to do with size? The looks of the town? Traditions? "Civic pride?" "Quality of life?" Friendliness? A "healthy local economy?" Congestion? Local services? What??
I'll continue to share my ideas, but I'd like to hear what yours are.