Why does your town exist? What makes your community thrive?
How is that for holiday time existential questions?
Recently I revisited a recording by Minnesota Public Radio of a community meeting up in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in the heart of 10,000 lakes country. Two University of Minnesota Extension educators in the Community Vitality program, Ben Winchester (at UMN-Morris at the time) and Jody Horntvedt (Roseau) engaged in a conversation with radio host Jeff Horwich, at a town hall way back in 2009.
Everything changes… except what remains the same.
There are always things that need to be done and in many communities there’s more and more groups yet fewer and fewer people willing to step up and get them done.
Communities’ …reason for existing has changed over time. The reason towns were spaced so close together was that was where the railroads needed to stop… Communities say “we want to attract new people.” Well, that’s great…but why does your community exist?
Difficult questions. Every community has different answers. They talked about things that make small towns work, about community groups and welcoming newcomers.
People are moving to rural places. People like the quality of life. We are getting newcomers all the time, and it’s not just who we tend to think of… People are moving around all the time.
There’s some difficult questions about the future of the service and fraternal organizations, but that’s a blog of its own. Overall, it comes down to communities re-inventing themselves.
Even today, Jody is working “on applied learning cohort for public sector leaders from communities of all sizes.” Extension tends to attract the practical people, and Jody is working to help small town leaders navigate the evolving landscape of community economic development.
Ben is also still at work with Extension on the ideas they talked about in Grand Rapids, based now in St. Cloud, Minnesota. He’s been working with rural communities experiencing leadership shortages. He’s also been working with others across the Upper Midwest, talking to people who are moving their families back to small towns across the region. They have documented this “Brain Gain” phenomenon in many different communities.
Winchester’s research challenges the view rural communities are in decline, finding instead a complex pattern of population change marked by both loss and growth. While many small towns do experience outmigration of young adults, many also simultaneously attract well-educated adults in their 30s and 40s and their families seeking affordability, safety, and a slower pace of life. One key for these newcomers is finding a small town where folks actually welcome them home.
If you have an hour, go back and give a listen to the town hall. The topic is evergreen in winter’s snow as in summer’s glow.
The question comes back to this: “Why does your town exist? What makes your community thrive?”
I originally wrote about Ben and Jody’s town hall back in 2009 in this post: “A Centennial of Cooperation”. Still relevant. Still working on it.
Cross-posted at Medium.com.
