CHAPTER 5

Sustaining Prosperity

We began this book by welcoming you on the journey to community prosperity and noting how much the communities we live in affect our everyday life and even define us. We took the first steps of our journey with a question and a promise. The question was why some communities thrive and grow while others stagnate or decline, and why some communities are able to face adversity and reboot while others cannot. We asked, metaphorically, if there was a secret sauce or fairy dust for community success. We still haven’t found any fairy dust, but we do hope the book has provided you with a recipe for the sauce. But, please don’t keep it secret like a treasured family recipe—share it with others to help them achieve prosperity. Remember our mantra of Read, Reflect, Share, and Act.

We noted in the Introduction that now is a good time for this book, ironically due in part to the pandemic during which people in towns and cities everywhere learned to work together better to address a common problem facing their communities and the world. And, just like the COVID-19 vaccine, we expressed our hope that learning how to build a prosperous community would provide a degree of protection from future shocks and contribute to sustainable prosperity for your community.

Our promise was to provide you with a toolbox for community prosperity, and we hope we have lived up to that, not only through the tools at the end of each chapter and the associated worksheets at ProsperousPlaces.org, but also by providing you with the knowledge of how to use them. Even the best toolbox will not make a carpenter out of someone who doesn’t know how to use what’s inside. Let’s reflect now on our journey and see how far we’ve come and how much knowledge we’ve gained.

New Normal for Your Community

As we recovered from the initial pandemic, we kept our fingers crossed, hoping, first, that any additional rounds of infection from variants of the COVID-19 virus would not be as serious, and, second, that we would be better prepared to deal with them. The COVID-19 “echo” round with the Delta and other variants has challenged the first hope, but the knowledge gained through research and experience with the initial pandemic has provided us with tools (including vaccines) to cope better with current and future infections.

In some parts of the world, the COVID-19 virus is still out of control and variants are spreading. Data presented in Chapter 1 show clearly that the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was severe—a multigenerational event in some ways comparable to the Great Depression. The real focus of Chapter 1, however, was whether the pandemic has created a “new normal” with lasting social and economic effects. We noted in Chapter 1 that the term new normal has been frequently used and sometimes applied to events that had little, if any, lasting effect. The question then becomes are we crying wolf if we call life after the pandemic a new normal?

Data and information presented in Chapter 1 make the case that we are not. Chapter 1 cites expert opinion, studies, and surveys on the long-term effects of the pandemic stemming from business closures, quarantines, and the new remote “geography of work.” The evidence is compelling that remote work will continue to be a preferred practice for many companies and employees. This means that remote work employees are freer to reside where they prefer and not necessarily close to their employer, and companies may not necessarily be tied to locations where workers live. The new geography of work offers challenges and opportunities—challenges for some urban cores that may lose workers and companies but also opportunities for suburban and rural communities to attract them.

The pandemic struck hard and fast, sparing very few communities from an economic and social shock unequaled for decades. The pandemic gave virtually all cities and towns a taste of what can happen to communities at any time due to the loss of a major employer or other economic shock. If there is even a hint of a silver lining in some corner of the COVID-19 storm clouds, it could be that many communities have learned a bit more about residents working together to address immediate challenges, how to meet future challenges, and how to find opportunities in the postpandemic new normal.

How hard was your community hit by the pandemic and what do you think will be the lasting effects? Do you believe there are opportunities for your community in the postpandemic new normal and new geography of work? We urge you to use the tools in the Chapter 1 toolbox to consider these questions.

Prosperity Revisited

We hope the book has helped you develop a better understanding and appreciation for your community. How prosperous do you now think your community is within the framework of the four prosperous community components? A key point of Chapter 2 is that the first step in building a prosperous community is to define what you are building. Just as you should not build a house without a blueprint, you should not try to build a community without a plan and vision. We began Chapter 2 by noting that there are many different definitions of individual prosperity—some emphasize wealth and financial success while others emphasize a “rich and full life.” That led us to consider the definition of community prosperity by examining two contrasting communities, Riverside and Port City.

The question of which town is more prosperous then led us to consider studies and surveys about factors that residents prefer in their communities. Physical factors such as safety and parks and recreation were highly rated as were social factors including a feeling of shared community and opportunities for involvement and service. Economic factors such as the availability of good paying jobs were also listed but were ranked behind some of the physical and social factors. We noted that these preferences for community factors closely reflect Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid with basic needs such as food, shelter, and safety at the base supporting higher-order needs corresponding to community involvement and a sense of belonging.

Based on this discussion, we identified four components that define community prosperity: basic needs, quality of life, social needs, and economy. We then listed some specific community factors or characteristics that fall under each prosperous community component. For example, safety and education were listed under the basic needs component and a strong employment base and economic opportunity for all residents were listed under the economy component.

A discussion of the strong interactions among the four components led us to conceptualize a roadmap to community prosperity. We noted that each community should customize and prioritize the factors under each of the four community components that are most important to them—the beginning of a custom community blueprint. We drew a ring road around the four prosperous community components connecting them to symbolize the synergies and interactions among them. At the heart of the roadmap was the vision a community has for its future that is critical to customizing and prioritizing the important community factors and understanding the interactions among them.

We concluded Chapter 2 with the observation that just as a well-run company should make investment decisions based on how they contribute to its mission and profitability, a community should make strategic and budget decisions based on how they contribute to its vision and definition of prosperity. To illustrate this, we introduced a third town to join Riverside and Port City in a Tale of Three Cities. Overton was based on the real-life story of Tupelo and Lee County, Mississippi that achieved sustainable prosperity by building and following their own roadmap. As we conclude our journey, we would like to introduce you to another community with an inspiring story that has also followed the roadmap to achieve prosperity—Fairfield, Iowa. Tupelo and Fairfield used the tools we discuss in this book to create a vision and customized roadmap to prosperity. If your community hasn’t done this already, we urge you to get started!

Laying the Foundation

In Chapter 3 we discussed using the process of community development to create a prosperous-ready community that is appealing to business and residents alike, thus creating a solid foundation for the process and outcome of economic development including more and better jobs, and higher incomes. We saw that community development is about connecting people and resources and building on the “capitals” that all communities have.

During the pandemic people who were working and schooling at home were apparently also exercising more. Health and fitness equipment revenue more than doubled from March to October in 2020, and sales of treadmills increased 135 percent.¹ All that conditioning undoubtedly helped build healthier bodies more capable of engaging in regular activities such as cutting the grass or playing a game of pickup basketball. And, as many of us know from experience, after the first couple of workouts, we are in better condition for the next ones. As we discussed in Chapter 3, the same holds true for community development. By engaging in the process of community development, improving social cohesion, and building human and social capital, communities become better conditioned to do more of it and become better at it.

All these elements or community capitals are ingredients for the recipe to create community prosperity. Sometimes, we see places changing due to the actions of just one person or one institution, but community development is a group activity with strategies emerging from the collective decision of many people to take action. Strategies for community improvement are driven by vision and require communitywide initiatives and collaboration to succeed. It is helpful to think of community development as community building, including building the components for a prosperous-ready community.

The Final Step to a Prosperous Community

Chapters 1 through 3 set the stage for the final step toward prosperity outlined in Chapter 4—the process and outcome of economic development. The first steps are to develop a vision and strategic plan and start building a prosperous-ready community. This will make economic development efforts more successful and help create the kind of prosperity the community wants to achieve. Without laying the foundation, a lot of time and money can be wasted with little result except increased frustration and doubts about a community’s ability to improve.

Chapter 4 began with the inspiring story of Osceola, Arkansas that did so many things right. They created a prosperous-ready community and then engaged successfully in the process of economic development, specifically engaging in a marketing outreach program that led to a tremendous economic development outcome—billions of dollars of business investment and thousands of new jobs for the community and region. As we saw in Chapter 2’s wealth and cash flow “tank” diagram, these billions of dollars circulate and recirculate within the community to create even more wealth and jobs. The wealth tank diagram clearly shows the simple but sometimes overlooked concept that increasing the flow of money into the local economy and decreasing the outflow will help create community prosperity.

Next in Chapter 4, we discussed ways to increase the inflow of money from business investment, noting that businesses naturally want to locate in communities that have an available and productive workforce, good transportation services, and other key factors of production to stay competitive and earn a profit. In addition, business owners and managers also prefer communities with quality-of-life enhancements, a good education system, and opportunities for community involvement—in other words, communities that rate well in all four prosperous community components. Achieving that involves the process of community development.

Just as successful businesses concentrate on their core product and customer markets, a community should do the same and not try to be “all things to all people.” Success in marketing comes from targeting those sectors and industries for which the community has a comparative advantage—a community with a college engineering program recruiting tech companies or a community with good weather and health care recruiting retirees and vacationers.

However, encouraging new investment into a community (increasing the inflow and raising the community wealth level) is just one leg of the traditional economic development stool. The two other legs, working to help ensure that existing local businesses stay and expand in the community instead of relocating—often referred to as business retention and expansion—and supporting entrepreneurs and startup businesses are just as important, or more so, than recruiting new businesses. However, a new business moving to town often garners front page headlines while the expansion of an existing company or the launch of a new one are often taken for granted. The city of Fairfield, Iowa, profiled earlier is an example of a community that understands the three legs of the economic development stool and includes the care of existing businesses and nurture of new businesses in its vision and strategic plan.

The growth of community enterprises led us in Chapter 4 to suggest a new metaphor for economic prosperity: a four-legged bench instead of a three-legged stool. Community enterprises take a variety of forms, including employee-owned businesses or businesses owned by local public investors. For example, they can be found in rural towns to provide services that privately owned businesses are not supplying such as a grocery store, or in urban areas where “big box” stores have crowded out smaller specialty stores. We concluded that discussion with the observation that to some extent, all businesses are community enterprises. Business prosperity and community prosperity are intertwined—communities provide services such as roads and education to support businesses and, in turn, businesses support the community by creating jobs, incomes, and tax revenues.

To successfully engage in the economic development process and deliver these services, a community must devote adequate resources to the effort (including staff and funding), and Chapter 4 provides some guidelines on this. Some communities look at economic development funding as just another budget cost item. However, economic development efforts can, and often do, return to the community much more money than they cost by helping create new jobs and higher incomes. Money spent on the economic development process should be viewed as an investment, not just a cost, and the returns it generates should be monitored and evaluated.

Sustaining a Prosperous Community

Detroit, Michigan was once an economic and cultural powerhouse. For decades after World War II, the “Big Three” in Detroit dominated U.S. automobile production, creating a healthy middle class composed of white- and blue-collar workers. This prosperity helped make Detroit a center of arts and culture, giving birth to the “Motown” sound that still gets fingers snapping and toes tapping to this day. Detroit is now a shell of its former self with urban decay and a population 60 percent less than at its peak in the 1950s. However, like green shoots after a forest fire, signs of rebirth are occurring as entrepreneurs and urban pioneers start new companies and rebuild grand homes in a low cost of living environment. Detroit is a long way from rebooting, but perhaps these early signs bode well for the future of the city.

In contrast, Tupelo, Mississippi, featured in Chapter 2, has rebooted its economy twice from agriculture to manufacturing and then to advanced manufacturing, keeping up with changing conditions and sustaining prosperity. Atlanta, Georgia transformed itself from the capital of the “Old South” to the capital of the “New South” by first becoming a transportation hub and then attracting global companies and millions of new residents by providing a good low-cost business climate and high quality of life with affordable housing and world-class universities. While Detroit struggled to adapt to the “new normal” of its declining auto industry, the small city of Tupelo and the large metropolis of Atlanta not only adapted to the new normal of global markets, supply chains, transportation, and logistics, but they also anticipated these developments.

Once a community comes up on the “plane” of community prosperity like a boat getting up to speed, it must keep its hand on the throttle and continue to supply the fuel required to support prosperity in the form of community and economic development processes and outcomes. We urge you to keep your community’s roadmap to prosperity with you at all times and update it as external or internal conditions change.

We have greatly enjoyed our journey with you along the road to prosperity and our time together in community “reboot” camp. We look forward to further travels and adventures together.

¹ “The Pandemic’s Home-Workout Revolution May Be Here To Stay,” 2021. The Washington Post, www.washingtonpost.com/road-to-recovery/2021/01/07/home-fitness-boom/