Welcome aboard the journey to community prosperity! The places we live affect our lives in many ways. Local employers provide jobs and incomes. Local governments build and maintain infrastructure and provide critical services such as fire and police protection. Communities educate our children and offer shopping, dining, entertainment, and recreational opportunities. Our families, friends, colleagues, and neighbors share the community with us.
Communities help define us. If someone sitting next to you on an airplane trip is from Manhattan, your preconceived notion of that person might well be urban sophisticate—business executive or arts and theater patron. If the person is from a small town in Montana, outdoor recreation or ranching might first come to mind. These preconceived notions may or may not be accurate, but they can influence how others perceive us.
Communities shape us as well. If the Manhattan resident inherits a ranch and moves to rural Montana, he or she might lose some of those big city ways and perhaps learn to hunt and fish. Conversely, if the small town Montana resident moves to Manhattan for the job of a lifetime, he or she will likely adapt to the faster pace of city living, learn to navigate public transportation, and enjoy the arts and theater. In a new environment, most people want to blend in, not stand out, and they tend to adopt some of the local culture.
Because the communities we live in are so important to us, we want to maintain and improve them not only for our own benefit but also for the benefit of family members and friends we share them with. When something good happens to our community such as a new business or downtown renovation, we take pride in the progress. However, when bad things happen such as the loss of a major employer, there can be mixed reactions. Some people may take the attitude that the town is on a downward path. Drive around the country and you will see many communities that are shadows of their former selves with vacant buildings and houses in disrepair. Other communities, however, are able to recover from setbacks and, if necessary, reinvent or “reboot” themselves. They are blessed with people who can adapt to change, roll up their sleeves, and work for a better future. And, communities of all sizes from small towns to sprawling metropolises can reboot and revitalize.
Consider, for example, Colquitt, Georgia, a small town of about 2,000 residents in the southwest part of the state. When, years ago, the agriculture industry there began a steady decline, the town’s heritage and prosperity were threatened. “We realized we had to do something different if we were going to stay alive ... we were treading water,” stated the city manager. Today, Colquitt is a popular tourist destination attracting thousands of visitors each year generating an economic impact of $2 million dollars.1 The rest of the story of the transformation of Colquitt from a small farming town to a nationally known folk theater community whose “Swamp Gravy” production has played in Washington’s Kennedy Center is offered at the end of the Introduction.
We wrote this book to help communities move forward. It’s about place making and helping a community rebuild and reboot, making an already prosperous place even better, or achieving whatever outcome is desired by those who live there. We hope you find it entertaining as well as informative, and we wish you best wishes on your journey to community prosperity!
What Will You Learn?
Thomas Edison is credited with saying, “success is 90 percent perspiration and 10 percent inspiration.” While that may be true for his inventions, we would assign more equal weights to success for community development and prosperity. Without a doubt, perspiration or hard work is a key component. Community progress does not occur overnight. It is almost always the result of determination and hard work by a wide group of leaders and citizens. Inspiration is also a key component. Communities that are motivated to overcome challenges, or by their vision of a better life for current and future generations, are certainly more likely to achieve prosperity than communities that believe their future will be determined by outside forces largely beyond their control. Combining this inspiration with an understanding of community and economic development principles creates a potent formula for community improvement.
Our primary objective for this book is to provide readers with a tool-box for community prosperity. The tools include:
| SUCCESS STORIES: Case studies and examples of how communities have achieved and maintained prosperity; |
| ASSESSMENT: Understanding the current status of your community and identifying assets to build on and liabilities to address; |
| VISIONING AND PLANNING: Creating a vision and plan for the future; |
| LAYING THE FOUNDATION: Using community development best practices to build a “prosperous-ready” community that is an attractive business and residential location; |
| BUILDING ON THE FOUNDATION: Using economic development best practices to create a strong economy and prosperous community; |
| SUSTAINABILITY: Maintaining a prosperous community with better opportunities for all residents. |
The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc around the world with business bankruptcies, mass unemployment, disruption of family life, and millions of deaths. Fortunately, vaccines were developed and rolled out in record time to support recovery from the pandemic. We would like to consider this book in a similar light. Understanding community and economic development principles and best practices can be a kind of vaccine to help communities cope with setbacks and remain healthy and prosperous.
Check In For Community Reboot Camp
reboot (rē-ˈbüt) : to start (something) anew: to refresh (something) by making a new start or creating a new version2
According to Merriam-Webster, the term reboot was first used in 1971 to describe restarting a computer to load a new operating system or fix a problem. Since then, it’s become a regular part of our vocabulary. When one of the many electronic devices we constantly rely on seems to be confused and not working properly, our first reaction is usually to reboot, and, lo and behold, this frequently works for reasons the nontechnical among us can’t explain. Reboot is now commonly used to describe a variety of situations involving transformation or starting afresh: rebooting companies, rebooting careers, or even rebooting relationships. Somehow rebooting seems to have a softer, less-threatening connotation than starting over, and thanks to those resurgent electronic devices, seems to carry a higher promise of success. Providing a higher standard of living and quality of life for all residents is possible for any community through smart community and economic development practices, whether it involves a reboot or just some tweaks to an already healthy community.
As we begin, let’s define terms. Community has many connotations. It can refer to a group of people that share a connection or interest of some kind wherever the individuals are located, such as a community of antique automobile enthusiasts. In this book, we use community in the sense of a geographic place—a small town or a large city under a single municipal government. However, the principles and ideas in this book can apply to a neighborhood, a metro area or region encompassing many jurisdictions, or even a state—any geographic area that would support common community and economic development policies.
The COVID-19 Pandemic—A Catalyst and Backdrop for the Book
We have been meaning to write this book for some time now. Our experience in working with communities across the country and around the world, and our research and teaching have provided us with knowledge we want to share with everyone interested in community and economic development—full-time professionals, elected officials, local board members, and community volunteers. Each community is unique, but the tried and true formulas for successful community and economic development still apply.
The COVID-19 pandemic acted as a catalyst encouraging us to put this book together at a time when economic and social disruption and tragic personal loss at both the global and local levels have been vividly and painfully demonstrated. Rebooting from this historic shock has taxed our political and social systems—indeed the human psyche—to their limits. However, tragedy and loss often make us thankful for things we might have taken for granted. We are all deeply indebted to our health care and public safety professionals for their unselfish and often heroic response to the pandemic.
Fortunately, as we write this book, recovery from the pandemic has occurred in the United States and around the world. However, variations of the coronavirus continue to pop up in different parts of the world, so the threat of new outbreaks remains. Despite the recovery from COVID-19, our research indicates that there will be lasting effects for many businesses, individuals and communities. Thousands of U.S. businesses have permanently closed, particularly in the hospitality and service industries. The shift to remote work caused by the pandemic has demonstrated to many companies and employees that commuting to the office daily and traveling for face-to-face meetings may no longer be the best business model. There are indications that increased reliance on remote work will be an enduring legacy of the pandemic with significant long-term implications for the travel and hospitality industries, commercial real estate markets, and businesses and residential locations. These effects will require significant adjustments for those parties most affected by the pandemic.
The immediate and severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic prompted an extraordinary response from governments, businesses, and other private-sector organizations to address the public health and economic effects of the outbreak. At the local level, chambers of commerce, community and economic development agencies, and other public and private organizations in many communities reacted swiftly to help local businesses. Respondents to a ProsperousPlaces.org survey reported a variety of services that community and economic development agencies offered local businesses including serving as a clearinghouse for assistance information; facilitating communications among local organizations; and providing information on the status of local restaurant and retail establishments.3
In other words, people in towns and cities everywhere worked together to address a common problem and help their communities. This is the essence of the community development process that we will explore in detail in this book. Ironically, an unexpected benefit of the pandemic is an enhanced awareness and spirit of cooperation for community and economic development. Furthermore, as the saying goes, where there is change, there is new opportunity. While social and economic impacts from the pandemic such as increased reliance on remote work may present challenges for some cities, they may present opportunities for others. Both can best be addressed using community and economic development principles.
Change Comes in All Sizes and Flavors
Someone once said (and we’re sure many people have taken credit for it) that the only certainty is uncertainty. The sudden onset of COVID-19 and its tremendous impacts caught the world by surprise. However, at any time communities of any size can be hit by shocks that for them are equal to or worse than the pandemic: industries decline, large companies shut down and lay off hundreds of workers, military bases close, major projects are cancelled—and the list goes on. Change can be sudden and dramatic, or it can be prolonged and subtle. In Douglas, Georgia, a local food processing plant shut down in May 2009 eliminating 2,200 jobs in a town with a population of 11,500. The county unemployment rate soared to 19 percent.4 Cities like Allentown, Pennsylvania, and Duluth, Minnesota, lost thousands of jobs over several years as major industries undergirding their local economies declined (steel and mining, respectively).5 Smaller towns such as Osceola, Arkansas, and Helper, Utah, lost major employers causing severe economic dislocation. Yet these and other cities that suffered major setbacks managed to reboot themselves, recover, and thrive. Tupelo, Mississippi, did not experience such sudden and dramatic shocks, but it successfully adapted to longer-term economic change and created local prosperity with a modern diversified economy. We will share the success stories of these communities and others throughout the book.
Central to the book is the question of why some communities thrive and grow while others stagnate or decline, and how some communities are able to reboot and recover from adversity or simply achieve their vision of becoming a better place to live, work, and play. Is there a secret sauce or fairy dust that makes communities successful and prosperous? What are the ingredients? Spoiler alert: no magic required, just good planning and execution and plenty of hard work—and any community can do it.
Some may say that communities should stick to the limited role of providing basic services such as public safety and municipal utilities and leave “prosperity” to the private sector. To that, we respond that a community is much more than streets and sewers. Individuals and businesses don’t maintain their own parks and symphony halls. Through elected representatives, the residents of a community make collective decisions on publicly funded and shared services and amenities that define a community as much or more than basic services. While businesses and other job-creating organizations require good basic services to operate, they are also attracted to communities that have a good education system, reasonable regulatory policies, and quality of life amenities. Making a community more supportive of businesses and working to attract them in order to provide good jobs to residents is a time-honored and legitimate function for local governments and economic development organizations.
Who Should Read the Book?
If you have reached this section, either you have read the first few pages, or you are just skimming through looking for highlights and deciding whether you want to read the entire book. In either case, you must have an interest in community and economic development, and we wrote this book for you. A central theme is that community change and improvement is a team effort. When speaking or teaching, the authors are often asked, “How does my community get on the radar screen to attract new businesses and residents?” How to answer that in one minute or less? What’s the elevator speech or soundbite for this question? After years of struggling to find a quick but meaningful answer instead of “it depends on the situation,” our response now is “the more people that understand the fundamentals of community and economic development, the greater the chance of community improvement and greater prosperity.”
Therefore, building awareness of community and economic development best practices and success stories is the raison d’etre for this book. It is written for community leaders, volunteers, and anybody interested in community improvement and progress, including professionals who work for community and economic development organizations. Even though these professionals may already be familiar with key concepts of community and economic development, our hope is that this book will enhance their knowledge. All in all, this book is aimed at a broad audience of community leaders because success in community and economic development requires a committed team.
Leadership does not just include elected officials. Community leaders, people who are listened to and respected for their civic commitment and work, commonly include executives from local businesses or community service organizations, members of local boards, or just volunteers who care about their community. What constitutes good leadership has been the subject of countless books, articles, and seminars. While it is not the primary focus of this book, we will consider leadership within the context of community and economic development.
How This Book Is Structured
While both research and practice in the field of community and economic development are constantly evolving, communities have been using these principles for decades to improve themselves. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, have made communities more aware of the importance of community and economic development and therefore created an enhanced learning opportunity. Chapter 1, The New, New Normal, puts the COVID-19 pandemic in historical perspective from a community and economic development standpoint and discusses how some pandemic-related changes are likely to persist, offering both challenges and opportunities for communities. Many people think of prosperity in only economic terms, but Chapter 2, How Prosperous is Your Community?, introduces a broader, holistic definition of prosperity and offers a roadmap to help attain it. Chapter 3, Laying the Foundation: A Prosperous-Ready Community, introduces the process of community development as a tool to position your community for prosperity. Chapter 4, Building a Prosperous Community, focuses on how economic development best practices, building on the foundation of Chapter 3, can help achieve prosperity. Chapter 5, Sustaining a Prosperous Community, summarizes some key lessons and presents more inspiring examples of successful communities.
Of course, you are free to surf and focus on the sections that most interest you, but the book is laid out sequentially and each chapter builds on previous ones. Just as a play would have less meaning if you missed Act One, skipping the initial chapters will diminish the essential message that community development is an important prerequisite to economic development and prosperity. Failure to understand and act on this is a major reason some communities are not as prosperous as others are. Community success involves subtle blends of knowledge and action, and we have attempted to present a balance of these elements. This book, then, is a call to action, but not to uninformed action. We do not advocate a “fire, ready, aim” approach.
To get the most out of this book, we suggest the following formula: Community development is an ongoing process. The social, political, and economic circumstances surrounding a community change, sometimes gradually and sometimes suddenly like the COVID-19 pandemic. Circumstances within a community and its vision and goals also change. This book offers a toolbox to help communities get started on the journey to prosperity. It is designed to be a companion to additional resources available at ProsperousPlaces.org. Through programs created previously by the authors such as the Janus Forum (www.janusinstitute.org), we have seen first-hand the effectiveness of peer learning and shared experiences. Our goal is to create a “community of communities” to learn and grow with each other. We look forward to accompanying you on your journey to community prosperity, so turn to Chapter 1 and let’s get started.
Read, Reflect, Share, and Act
| Read: Learn principles and techniques and see how other communities have succeeded. Even if you are experienced in community and economic development, there will likely be some new ideas for you in the book. |
| Reflect: How do these principles, techniques, and examples apply to your community? |
| Share: Encourage others in your community to read and discuss the book. One person alone cannot generate community prosperity. Progress begins with a critical mass of informed local citizens and stakeholders. |
| Act: Each chapter concludes with a toolbox of action items based on that chapter’s core principles. Let this book and other educational resources guide your community to effective action. |
Prosperous Community Toolbox
The introduction to How to Build Prosperous Places sets the stage and explains why the book is particularly relevant in today’s world. From global pandemics to businesses shutting their doors and eliminating thousands of jobs, there are many reasons why a community might need to adapt or reboot. Through this book and the accompanying worksheets, we’ll explore ways anyone who cares about the place they call home can help lead the way to more prosperous tomorrows.
I 1 Encourage others in your community to read the book and learn more about community and economic development. To support this, we have set up bulk purchasing options to make it easier for you to share this with your fellow community members. Visit www.prosperousplaces.org/bulk to share.
I 2 Establish Community Action Groups. with regular meetings (in-person or virtual, depending on the situation and preference in your community) to discuss key concepts in the book, how they apply to your community, and how to begin the journey to community prosperity. Visit www.prosperousplaces.org/rebooteconomics_toolbox/ to download our tips for Community Actions Groups.
Colquitt, Georgia: Rebooting With Arts and Tourism
Who would have thought a small rural town with only vestiges of its former agricultural strength remaining would become a home for world-class storytelling? Well, that’s exactly what Colquitt, Georgia (Figure I.1), did, converting an old cotton warehouse into a theater for sharing their stories and attracting tourists from around the world. To save their community as its agricultural industry declined, Colquitt community leaders knew they had to reboot. In this case, the proverb that necessity was the mother of invention was applicable.
Creating an art industry began as an idea of how to re-create and rebrand our community according to Cory Thomas, City Manager.6 Individuals in the community “gathered stories of their heritage, history, and community to put on the stage,” and the result was Swamp Gravy, named after a local stew. Swamp Gravy’s mission is to “involve as many people as possible in a theatrical experience that empowers the individual, bonds the community and strengthens the local economy while crossing the boundaries of, race, economy and social class.” As discussed in this book, this is the very essence of community and economic development.
Renovation of a cotton warehouse into a theater building was just the start of a downtown renaissance. According to one study, over $1 million has been invested in renovation and building projects, including a childcare center and storytelling museum patterned after the town square.7 The Swamp Gravy Institute, which grew out of the revitalization initiative, holds workshops and helps other communities create their own productions. The Institute also sponsors an annual film festival and an after school program. Swamp Gravy has been performed in Centennial Park in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympics and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Swamp Gravy and associated initiatives have created jobs and generated millions of dollars in revenue for the city and county. Swamp Gravy is an inspiring example of the community development process with residents taking action to create arts-based economic development.
• 5 large potatoes, finely diced
• 1 large white onion, finely chopped
• 2 cups of whole kernel corn
• 14 oz. of cut okra
• 28 oz. of water
• 28 oz. of crushed red tomatoes
• Fish stock
• Full recipe: https://recipeself.com/swamp-gravy-recipe/
1 2021. “The Small But Mighty City of Colquitt Doesn’t Quit,” Icma Org. https://icma.org/blog-posts/small-mighty-city-colquitt-doesnt-quit
2 “Reboot,” Merriam-Webster (Merriam-Webster), www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reboot (accessed April 05, 2021).
3 N.A. October 13, 2020. “Economic Development in the New Normal,” ProsperousPlaces org, www.prosperousplaces.org/2020/09/14/economic-development-in-the-new-normal/
4 “Turnaround Towns: International Evidence,” Carnegie UK Trust, www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/publications/turnaround-towns-international-evidence/ (accessed April 05, 2021).
5 “Turnaround Towns: International Evidence,” Carnegie UK Trust.
6 N.A. 2021. “The Small But Mighty City Of Colquitt Doesn’t Quit,” Icma Org, https://icma.org/blog-posts/small-mighty-city-colquitt-doesnt-quit
7 N.A. 2021. “The Small But Mighty City Of Colquitt Doesn’t Quit,” Icma Org, https://icma.org/blog-posts/small-mighty-city-colquitt-doesnt-quit