What Will Become of Small Towns In The Future?

[photoLith]

I live in Pittsburgh, but almost every weekend I drive down to WV to hunt for antique marbles and glass. For the past ten years I’ve lived here, I’ve always wondered what will become of the towns that lie far beyond any major city or employment hub. In WV for example many if not most of the towns are already crumbling and mostly abandoned. I was down in Clarksburg, WV today, the home of Akro Agate Co (which made marbles and glassware from around 1918-1953, my avatar) and it’s just so sad. Every single town in WV, outside of the eastern panhandle or Morgantown or Charleston is mostly abandoned and inhabited by a large amount of pill pushers and meth heads.

This isn’t only WV. It’s every small town in the Deep South, the rural towns in the west and Midwest and Northeast. It’s everywhere.

I’m 35 now, and this trend started way before I was born. Cities and towns outside of major metro areas have all been dying.

What will become of these places that capitalism and all of its evils have forgotten in 50 years? Will all of these towns full of unique architecture just become completely abandoned in their entireties?

This all distresses me greatly. I’ve been to so many rural towns in southwestern WV, eastern KY, eastern TN, central AR, southern OH and all over the country wherein people cant read that it’s embarrassing and what hope do these places have for a future? Their parents and grandparents had union jobs which left for Asia and now our government doesn’t care for anything but giving hundreds of billions to Ukraine/Iraq/Afghanistan/Saudi Arabia/NATO for the military industrial complex… I fear everything will be lost when it comes to this countries history outside of the major metropolitan areas.

[craigs]

Modern agriculture, transportation, and extraction industries, which most American small towns were built to serve, no longer have any need for thousands of small towns scattered throughout the nation. Most small rural towns today don't offer sufficient jobs or amenities to suit working adults and also are too far from critical medical care to serve the needs of aging retirees. It's entirely possible that the world and nation will change such that these towns are once again needed to house and employ millions of Americans, but without that change it seems most small US towns will eventually return to dust. The kids of the future may learn with astonishment that there were so many small settlements in so many out-of-the-way locales.

[pj3000]

High-speed rail networks could save small towns that are located along major transportation corridors.

There’s really no reason to have the sheer number of smaller towns in the US that we do. For example, Pennsylvania’s cities would be much more robust places if the state didn’t 46 million towns with populations between 500 and 5,000. It’s ridiculous, and just illustrates how incredibly wasteful and overly-consumptive we as a society are.

I’d much rather have more highly-concentrated urban centers than thousands of small towns which very often have no real need to exist where they are, but rather came into being as a form of early sprawl. Places like Clarksburg exist because of capitalism, and their decline is due to it as well.

[JManc]

The bigger and more hectic urban areas get, the more I think small towns will be just fine. There will always be those who want a slower pace of life but the towns that survive will be more expensive and less dependent on agriculture or industry. WFH is probably a shot in the arm for many small towns.

[eschaton]

Complete death of settlements is nothing new in history. If you wind the clock back to the Bronze Age, virtually every site of even a substantial city (other than Jericho) has been abandoned, even if new cities sprung up not that far away. Even in modern U.S. history there are lots of examples of "ghost towns" - particularly in the western U.S. where towns sprung up around mines which were later played out. New England is full of towns which peaked in population back in the 1790s, and have only gone down. In the modern era, I don't even think rural decline is as bad in the U.S. as it is (for example) in some parts of Eastern Europe, where free movement has allowed the young to migrate en masse to the cities of Western Europe, leaving the hinterlands abandoned save for elderly people.

I do think it's arguable due to the particular social pathologies in the U.S. the decline manifests itself worse. Even within the U.S. there are differences. Declining areas in the High Plains, for example, don't show the same pervasive opioid issues as the Appalachians, and the remnant rural population tends to have a reasonably high standard of living (it's just their kids absolutely don't want to stay there).

There has actually been an argument made that the presence of a strong federal government is actually stopping the wholesale abandonment of these sort of communities over the past century or so. Essentially some towns decline to the point where essentially all the jobs remaining are remnant public-sector jobs - the Post Office, jobs in the local school district, etc. Total abandonment will never come because there's that low base of a few hundred jobs which allow areas to stumble along. You'd need steps towards planned abandonment - governmental consolidation and the like - to actually wind them down, which is never going to happen because people seldom give up local autonomy in government.

I do have to say using Clarksburg as an example of WV's decline was a bit odd though. Not that I'd say it has vitality, but it has the FBI offices which provide a white-collar job base well beyond what West Virginia typically has. Southern West Virginia is in far, far, far worse shape.

[Crawford]

Most of these towns don't make any economic sense, and will probably eventually die. It's a good thing if people leave and go somewhere with greater opportunity for their families.

The U.S. already has tons of abandoned settlements. I know in Michigan, there are hundreds of abandoned logging towns. There are lots of post office locales that essentially don't exist. The feds have spent trillions propping up these settlements and it would be saner to instead encourage people to leave.

[MayDay]

I grew up in the kind of place being discussed here. In my home county (Columbiana, in eastern Ohio), the population decline resulted in the closure of the OB/GYN units at the two main hospitals. Think about that, a county of about 100,000 people doesn’t have a birth rate. To give birth in a medical center, they have to travel 30-45 minutes outside of the county.

My hometown used to have a handful of manufacturers, but those went out of business. One of the largest employers is a meat processing plant; not the most desirable place of employment (they struggled to get workers long before the pandemic) but for a while there was a substantial amount of undocumented workers. They paid taxes, rented homes which would have otherwise been vacant, but one of the locals called ICE and they were rounded up and deported. https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/19/us/ic...ark/index.html The local politics don’t help - the lack of education usually results in the residents voting against their own interests. We’re talking about a place where people are delusional and think those long-gone manufacturers are ever coming back, and think a toxic waste incinerator is economic development. Crime from larger cities has made its way with meth labs and opioids, so the notion of the smaller towns being safe has gone out the window. And of course, the MAGA crowd still fly their flags from 2020, including five people from my graduating class who staunchly opposed vaccinations, guess how that went?

My parents are currently planning to leave my hometown to move closer, and like many people I grew up with, I no longer have any reason or inclination to return. It’s bittersweet as my hometown has a charming ‘main street’ business district and gorgeous historic homes, but honestly there’s nothing left there for me I don’t see it crumbling to dust, but I definitely think it will continue to decline.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by MayDay

I grew up in the kind of place being discussed here. In my home county (Columbiana, in eastern Ohio), the population decline resulted in the closure of the OB/GYN units at the two main hospitals. Think about that, a county of about 100,000 people doesn’t have a birth rate. To give birth in a medical center, they have to travel 30-45 minutes outside of the county.

My hometown used to have a handful of manufacturers, but those went out of business. One of the largest employers is a meat processing plant; not the most desirable place of employment (they struggled to get workers long before the pandemic) but for a while there was a substantial amount of undocumented workers. They paid taxes, rented homes which would have otherwise been vacant, but one of the locals called ICE and they were rounded up and deported. https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/19/us/ic...ark/index.html The local politics don’t help - the lack of education usually results in the residents voting against their own interests. We’re talking about a place where people are delusional and think those long-gone manufacturers are ever coming back, and think a toxic waste incinerator is economic development. Crime from larger cities has made its way with meth labs and opioids, so the notion of the smaller towns being safe has gone out the window. And of course, the MAGA crowd still fly their flags from 2020, including five people from my graduating class who staunchly opposed vaccinations, guess how that went?

My parents are currently planning to leave my hometown to move closer, and like many people I grew up with, I no longer have any reason or inclination to return. It’s bittersweet as my hometown has a charming ‘main street’ business district and gorgeous historic homes, but honestly there’s nothing left there for me I don’t see it crumbling to dust, but I definitely think it will continue to decline.

People often talk about "brain drain" in areas in outmigration, but I think your post gets to some of the less-focused-upon elements.

1. As people with more education leave, the (no other way to say it) average IQ of the area drops, meaning empty sloganeering becomes more popular than attempting to address a complex problem with a complex solution.

2. Similarly, it's probably the case that differential migration changes the distribution of personalities in these areas which makes a comeback harder. People open to new ways leave, people scared of change remain...when change is what these areas desperately need.

3. While in late capitalism it's increasingly difficult for anyone from a humble background to make it big and start their own substantial business, the economic incentives all push those who have any economic dynamism away from these sort of small towns into larger cities anyway.

[mrnyc]

and it isnt only about the lack of jobs … i was just reading our local staten island newspaper the advance this morning and looked at this article below about the civil service test and jobs. they are all very important jobs that we need people to do, but they are in the $40k/yr range. no doubt it would be easier to lve with those salaries in small towns, but i dk how anyone here or anywhere near here like in nj could live on that. at least with a family. the rich get richer and regular people arent paid enough. ugh.

https://www.silive.com/business/2022...-each-job.html

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by eschaton

1. As people with more education leave, the (no other way to say it) average IQ of the area drops,

You're equating education with intelligence. I've worked with a lot of "educated" people with a mess of degrees who were still dumbasses.

[homebucket]

The nice ones with historical interest will become tourist attractions. The nicer homes will turn into Airbnbs and the like. The other small towns with nothing really going for it will turn into ghost towns once its current generation dies off. Might be a few stragglers here and there but essentially there will be nothing left.

[iheartthed]

I don't think small towns will cease to exist any time soon, but many will obviously die out.

[hipster duck]

The biggest problem with small towns is that they're run by people with small town mentalities.

I don't mean to say that big city values are better. It's more than the kind of person who decides that being the big fish in a small pond is a better tradeoff than feeling small but experiencing more things is going to be more selfish, small-minded and corrupt, and you can see the results firsthand.

Again, this is not to say that there isn't corruption in big cities. But even the corruption in big cities requires a certain amount of sophistication and smarts because the stakes are high and the risk from whistleblowers and investigative journalists always lurks around the corner.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by pj3000

High-speed rail networks could save small towns that are located along major transportation corridors.

As much as we talk about how damaging freeways were to big cities, we really don't talk much about how much the interstate highway system damaged small towns. Many existed and survived because they were hubs on the pre-IHS road system and/or a railway hub (many times both).

[MayDay]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

As much as we talk about how damaging freeways were to big cities, we really don't talk much about how much the interstate highway system damaged small towns. Many existed and survived because they were hubs on the pre-IHS road system and/or a railway hub (many times both).

Yep, my hometown’s main street gets a lot of east-west vehicular traffic as it’s one of the most direct routes between several larger cities (Canton, Youngstown, Pittsburgh, etc.). Thing is, there’s been a long stalled project to build a connecting highway to the north which would connect Route 62 to Route 14 to Route 11; see 14T north of Salem https://goo.gl/maps/AygdR8ZP7RU9ErXe8

They’ve only completed a short stretch that serves as a local bypass, but if they ever complete the east-west connection, I can definitely see a huge impact on not just Salem but all the other towns along the way.

[mhays]

Rural counties used to have:
--Large farming or extraction workforces that relied on small towns dotted around.
--Locally-owned businesses that provided opportunities for career growth and ownership.
--Retail based on main streets that everyone relied on.
--Small-scale factories that served local and regional companies.
--Local highways used to serve long-distance travelers.

Now farming and extraction are automated. Local businesses got merged into or killed by conglomerates. Shopping malls took away the main streets, and focused retail into the county seats vs. every little town. Factories merged into fewer and huger ones as well. And we have freeways.

Little of that's going to change, though we're now onshoring more manufacturing.

[jd3189]

I would like to see many of these small towns be saved through better connections with the nearest major cities. Commuter rail service could be built to allow more influx of new comers who would either work from home, participate in the local economy, or commute to the major city. A lot of small towns have good urban bones and a fair amount of abandoned homes or lots to build more housing. If many of them are more incorporated into a metro area, they will be able to survive and thrive once again. Plus, it could help deal with the housings crisis going on in several highly-favored metros.

[Lost Island]

I stumbled across population statistics for most towns in the USA, big and small, not very long ago. Wish I had bookmarked it, because it's hard to come by. The statistics were shocking as to how many small towns (1-15k) from rural Texas to Maine had lost up to 1/3 of their population since 2010, some worse.

Lots of reasons given as to why rural America has seen an exodus, but there's one definite factor besides simple loss of industry. The access to health care, and specifically the literal closing of hospitals across the nation due to insolvency. It's a testament as to how dysfunctional and rotted the system is.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by jd3189

I would like to see many of these small towns be saved through better connections with the nearest major cities. Commuter rail service could be built to allow more influx of new comers who would either work from home, participate in the local economy, or commute to the major city. A lot of small towns have good urban bones and a fair amount of abandoned homes or lots to build more housing. If many of them are more incorporated into a metro area, they will be able to survive and thrive once again. Plus, it could help deal with the housings crisis going on in several highly-favored metros.

Pushing a bunch of high-earners from big cities into small towns will just price out the locals.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

As much as we talk about how damaging freeways were to big cities, we really don't talk much about how much the interstate highway system damaged small towns. Many existed and survived because they were hubs on the pre-IHS road system and/or a railway hub (many times both).

Yes, that's a very good point. Interstates largely parallel the old US/State highway system which passed through smaller towns across the nation. They were/are vital to commerce in these places, and the interstate system largely bypasses them completely, maybe only having an exit a few miles away from the town center.