A better prescription for downtowns, and its not a bitter pill!
Yesterday I woke up precipitously ill, with strange enough symptoms that, in a rarity for me, I went to the doctor. As a general rule I take a broadly preventative approach to health care focused mainly on diet, exercise, and the use of traditional herbs and roots, along with yoga and meditation.
I even gave birth at home using a midwife over fifteen years ago, when such a choice had even less support than it does today. Perhaps this arose from curiosity about long-standing health practices, or perhaps from something more mundane, such as a coping method after not having had insurance for most of my adult life.
All this is to say how truly unusual it is for me to go to a doctor for anything. But I schlepped out to the top quality County hospital yesterday because it is the final ace in the hole when, once a decade, I feel truly crummy. I don’t have anything against doctors, or Western medicine, generally speaking. It is fair to say that I find some of the gadgetry and pharmaceuticals, skyrocketing costs, and pencil pushing interlocutors an impediment rather than an enhancement to patient care, but who doesn’t. Be that as it may, my real gripe today is about location.
As historic downtowns look to infill empty storefronts and increase residential occupancy they often turn to the great hope of tourism. Plying their cultural organizations to the forefront, they seek market share against myriad other small towns competing for the same slice of the pie. To a greater or lesser extent, they build this out with local restaurants and the appearance of local retail. By appearance I mean that in all but the most hyper-local self manufacturing operations most “local retail” acts as a front end for the distribution of superfluous goods manufactured abroad, usually in China.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter. Tourists are in the market to get away from it all and finally do some spending, so from where goods originate is often of little concern to them and, if complimentary to the overall strategic positioning of the little cultural town that could, such as Staunton, means reliable sales when travelers come for enjoyment.
The hitch comes when we realize the vulnerabilities that come with this global front end outlet. Volatile world markets and volatile energy costs affect not only the traveler, but the cost of goods shipped. Struggling small retailers increasingly shuttering the doors to their tchotchke shops means less for the traveler to enjoy, less revenue for the town, fewer upgrades and services to make the place soar, and hence less of the “whole package” to sell the traveler on. And when one area starts to fail, you can bet other parts are not far behind.
So, what does this have to do with my going to the doctor? Well, I would have loved to hobble downtown yesterday to go to a doctor within walking distance of my downtown home. On peppier days I’d love to skip downtown to the dentist. I’d like a green dry cleaner and a New York size deli-scale grocer, and a working hardware store within a few blocks. Essential services, the basics, need to be more a part of any downtown revitalization because revitalization depends not just on what is imported from without–tourists–but on what grows within–the community.
This is not intended as a swipe against economic developers by any stretch. It is intended as a call to doctors and dentists, specialists, child care centers and service providers of many stripes to also consider yourself a part of the new urbanist entrepreneurial class. You don’t need to think that the first route to success is hanging your shingle on a strip mall with adequate parking. The walking resident wants you!
To truly revitalize small downtowns means first of all to strengthen the community enough to support a broad range of products and services within the local economy. Doctors, as much as anyone enjoying small town amenities want to be able to walk to work, to have their kids walk to school. People working and living downtown want to be able to get to appointments without having to slog out the car and fight the roadways in between meetings or other activities.
The point here is to think strategically about transition culture in such a way that the local economy can somewhat inoculate itself against a declining global and national economy by girding up its core infrastructure from within, in addition to orienting it outward. Magic wands and wishful thinking wont move someone to travel from another town to our town to indulge in its cultural pleasures. That “sell” takes a vast convergence of powerfully positioned marketing undergirded by a web of connections and relationships, collaborations, partnerships, and the individual efforts of given organizations. This can result in great successes, though it almost always rests on significant vulnerabilities. For small towns, and the long arc of small town success, dependency on a stream of outside revenue acts only as a counterweight to what is built from within.
That’s where small town culture and big city life differ greatly. Cities have their own vulnerabilities, of course, but diversity acts as a bulwark against the more immediate exposures that threaten small towns. Here’s where job seekers and prospectors can find their niche.
As urban escapees increasingly seek to downshift toward more localized economies, they can take a page from small town life by getting involved in local government, industry boards, citizen alliances, and independent groups. All these offer avenues to help shape the small town using proven elements from larger cities, such as dense downtown buildouts that support multiple fronts in the viability game. It also meets the crucial (read de rigeur) X factor in small town culture–living where you work and participating in the life of the community.
Part of this involves agitating for fair pricing on the part of owners–a cute town with too many empty storefronts should be lowering rents or negotiating pricing structures that match mutually beneficial performance indexes. Indeed, City government can even penalize absentee landlords with unfilled space through fee structures that motivate renting if its citizens support such a plan.
The bottom line is that you don’t have to think you need $300k in import inventory and a risk the size of Texas to become a relocated entrepreneur. There are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of empty storefronts across the country just waiting to be filled by emerging entrepreneurs offering an array of products and services, including small scale local manufacturing. They key is to find a truly necessary niche, often found in our traditional services, and fill it. The other piece is getting involved to shape the community you want to live in and be a part of building its resiliency and strength.
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