In the scheme of the developing western United States, the challenges small towns face now look a little different. The rails have already been laid for the most part, trucks allow people to live in remote places without growing all of their own food. The internet allows people in rural America the option of living with the same luxuries, if they have the money, as the people in large cities.

Small town America as a charity case
Last week, Damaris at the Internet Monk suggested the church in America make small towns a new mission field. She lives in a small town that just lost its grocery store. The owner retired and there was no around to replace him. “Where are the wealthy churches willing to back a small business operator in a rural area as their mission project? . . . running a doctor’s office or grocery store in rural America isn’t typically considered missions by many Christians. But if caring for people’s daily needs is a means of mission work in Burkina Faso, why not here?” That in itself is an interesting question, but it’s not the question that really prompted this article.

In the comments following Damaris’ appeal, a few people began to question the validity of saving small towns in the first place, let alone with church monies. Some people were suggesting we should, perhaps, just let them die — maybe even help them close up shop.

Should a small town try and be revived, or should it die?

Life in a small town — and by small here I’m thinking 2,500 people at the very most — wasn’t something I ever really wanted in life. My idealized space was always the countryside outside of a large city or the actual core of the city. Living in Siloam Springs, Arkansas for more than six years (not exactly small by rural standards at 14,000 people, but half the size of anywhere else I’d lived at that point) probably opened the idea up to my subconscious. Giving serious consideration to Hazelton, Kansas was the first active step in my considering life in a small town, very small. The past month I’ve been pondering a property for the arts center in the even smaller Kansas community of Ada, which appears to be made up of all of 8 named streets.

Who makes the call?
If we say that we think small towns should die, who makes the call? How small is too small? Do some small towns have cultural value that gives them precedence over their peers that might not have a museum or small college?

The debate over the value of rural America is actually already underway. A few weeks ago I heard a news bit about whether or not road maintenance in some of the more the rural parts of Nebraska should continue to be funded, or simply be forgotten at the state level. Fuel taxes are among the highest in the country in Nebraska and they still don’t cover the cost of highway maintenance.

Even if current sentiments and economics seem to suggest certain small towns are not worth keeping around, these may not be the best way to place value on rural communities. Some things about rural life can and have been argued for even as the world becomes more and more urban, and these ideals are worth fighting for.

When I was in college I took a community planning course — unfortunately I only had time for one. One of our projects was to anticipate the growth of our own city, Lincoln, Nebraska. The projects were then evaluated by a professional planner, and after the critique our professor pointed out that we all assumed the city would get larger. Why do we always assume our communities will grow?

What happens if we decide we need to shut down small towns now and then in 100 years see a need for them again?

The new small town
Is there an in between, does it have to be all or nothing? Is there a new look for small towns, can they persist, indeed flourish in a new way that hasn’t necessarily defined yet?

When thinking about Hazelton and Ada, I’ve realized quickly that the internet presents business opportunities that were formerly not an option in rural communities. Hobby farms or organic farming might work as Americans (thankfully) continue to become more and more aware of where their food comes from. Rural places will have to find ways to leverage their less-considered natural resources in order to attract outsiders. A good example of this is the Star Party in the Nebraska Sandhills.

Some sacrifices will inevitably have to be made, but I believe creative individuals — people who think outside the American lifestyle box — will be able to make it work. How would you make life in a small town work?

When I learned the old gray Toyota, which we’ve driven for the past four years, had a couple more confirmed issues I knew it was time. At 258,000 miles the car wasn’t worth putting another $2,000 into, even though it still runs well.

I loathe the process of shopping for and buying a car, although admittedly the internet has made the process much less painful. Yesterday’s adventure, ahem, still became a four-and-a-half hour ordeal. The car we wanted to test drive was at one of the dealer’s Lincoln locations so it had to be transferred. Just before they drove it to Grand Island, however, someone in Lincoln wanted to buy it. The local salesman and his manager fought for us (and their own commission) and in the end the car made it to our town, albeit two hours late.

Here's hoping the new car lasts us 10 years.

Regular readers will know, moreover, I loathe the fact that I have to own a car at all. I would rather walk or bike to work, and to the grocer and post office and church. I would rather spend the money that goes towards a car on a table saw, donation to charity, new kiln or trip to China than petrol, insurance, tires and then after it all, another car. I won’t go into more depth here since I’ve talked at length in the past about New Urbanism, community planning.

What was most interesting throughout this two week auto purchase process was that three people in the car business told me they also disliked the fact that they had to own a car, had to pay for an automobile. Two people at the dealership said this, as did the manager at the shop that changed the oil in the old car. I don’t know how sincere they were; the salesmen may have simply been commiserating with a potential customer. The oil change manager was easy to believe though.

James Kunstler’s book The Geography of Nowhere pointed out (if I recall correctly, it’s been 10 years since I read the book) how visitors to places like Disney World often can’t articulate one of the reasons they are so happy to be there: There aren’t any cars around. You walk around the park, take the ferry or monorail to your hotel. What will it take for us to realize how ingrained the automobile is in our culture? In our community design, our architecture, our economy, etc.?

The car we bought yesterday is a 2003 Toyota Corolla. It’s in fabulous condition and was a great buy. It should get twice the gas mileage of our old car — and it has a radio, and a working door handle.

I plan on it lasting 10 years. Or more.

The protagonist in Danielle Dutton’s novel S P R A W L says that the suburbs are a place of “apocalyptic foreboding.” We have seen the end of the world, and the end of the world is when all the earth has become suburbia.

There is hope, I think, in the realm of McMansions and manicured turf, the place where house cats are the leading predator. The place where sidewalks just decide to stop, as if to say why are you walking? These are the suburbs. Get in your car.

To which I respond by reminding people that — as the article does — that the problem with suburbs is that they are unwittingly designed around a life predicated on the automobile. Yes, McMansions, spaghetti-string streets and strip malls create some of their own issues, but most of suburbia’s blind philosophy relies on automobile.

Indeed, there is hope. There are people taking back the suburbs from the infestation of Hummers and fast food joints. There is community-supported agriculture on small lots. People are hiding chickens in their backyards. The number of people I see riding bicycles has tripled in the past year.

Read Thomas Turner’s Suburbs and Sprawl and Sidewalks! Oh My! via this link.

First off, if state and federal governments were planning in a responsible fashion, shouldn’t there be money to repair roads already allocated in an existing fund (not that I actually believe they are planning in such a way, but they should be)? Secondly, in theory rail will lighten the load on interstates meaning there won’t be as much money needed to maintain the roadways.

The article, which starts with a quote by U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood — also a Republican — found on Twitter, also includes some interesting words from a LaHood blog entry:

We’re talking about nothing short of transforming transportation much the same way the interstate highway system did under President Eisenhower. Can you imagine if Ohio or Wisconsin or any other state had said, “No, thanks — we don’t think that highway thing is going anywhere?”

If you think the United States can afford not to compete with the European and Asian nations who have embraced high-speed rail and other innovative infrastructure . . .

While I’m all for more public transportation options — I’d gladly take the train to the in-laws for Christmas if I could, making that trip so much more productive than being behind the wheel on that seven hour drive — competing with Europe or Asia is an irrelevant point when it comes to interstate rail. Not applying a potentially useful technology in the context of our own country is silly, assuming we can come up with the funding in a responsible manner, but the context is key here. Just because something is good for other countries doesn’t make it good for America.

And as much as I’d like a high-speed interstate rail system in the United States, I’m personally more interested in seeing time and money invested in transforming our addicted-to-automobile communities. Travel via interstate is a much more logical use of a car than in town anyway, where we could actually be walking or biking to the grocery store and post office if we planned our communities in a way that was not wholly auto-centric.

Adding: Why can’t high-speed rail be a private venture?

The long and short of what my skimming told me — I didn’t have time to finish the article — Renewable energy such as wind and solar won’t work for the cars we drive. No kidding! The article also, if I recall correctly, pointed out that these energy sources won’t even provide enough electricity, even if they are developed to the n^th degree, to meet our current electricity needs.

I’ve made the point on the blog before, as I recall, that we need to revamp the culture and our environmental design in order to get to where most or all of our energy needs come from renewable sources. We can’t work from the assumption that we can maintain the cultural status quo while at the same time switching over to renewable sources of energy. Instead, we must become creative in all aspects of our lives. Developing more efficient lifestyles seems like common sense to me — regardless of where our energy is coming from (Per my cursory skim the magazine article suggested nuclear, but I’d still rather see other avenues developed further along with more intentionally efficient living.).

Cameraphone capture of part of a wind turbine, going down I-80 on our way home from Nashville.

On our way down to the Hutchmoot last week, my wife and I were introduced to Rodney and Sidney Wright. Rodney wrote The Hawkweed Passive Solar House Book. He showed us around their house — inserting at least one pun into every sentence — pointing to all of the attention paid to making the home more energy efficient. The energy bill for the home was less than $50 a month for the 1,200 square foot structure in Paducah, Kentucky (a walkable community, he pointed out). The couple paid good money for energy efficient appliances, used prefabricated wall panels with dense foam insulation to build with and of course designed the home with climate and geography in mind, in a passive solar fashion.

It’s going to take this kind of intentionality in our design of life, I believe, in order to make renewables work. Sure some things might cost more now and then, but Wright made a point of saying that even though their uber efficient Swedish microwave/convection oven might have cost them $3,000 they built the home for only $85,000 (doing some of the work themselves, such as painting) just four years ago.

Wright also pointed out that we used to do better at designing our dwellings and communities as they relate to their local environments. What will it take as a culture to forgo the more common and under-considered living spaces we create in the United States?

We chose instead, just after graduating, to serve in mission mobilization with Mission Data International, which we’re still doing. So from the get go we had to raise money for my own fairly frugal salary. My wife became editing manager of our small town newspaper while we raised support, but she quit as we had planned when my student loans were paid off.

I don’t remember exactly what triggered the desire to seek out suburbia this week. It may have been seeing that happy family driving down the road in their newer car, combined with the chaos of moving into a very small house in neighborhood I don’t know anything about.

And now I’m wondering — not for the first time — now I’m asking the question “What is the appeal of suburbia?” Is it merely social pressure or is there more to it? Could it be there is something about the suburban space that hearkens to our subconscious? Is there something in us as humans that yearns for more open spaces (Yes, I know I’m posting this just after suggesting I miss downtown living.)? In recent years I’ve become a little less of a critic of the American suburbs, realizing we can’t just summarily do away with them and wondering, as already stated, if they came into being and proliferated with some substance beyond the greed of speculative developers.

My wife and I certainly have our reasons for intentionally standing outside of the typical pursuit of American suburbia, keyword here being pursuit. Our own interests, passions, point our time and efforts towards ends that, while still personal, attempt to look beyond our own comfort. We hope to be a counterculture for the common good. While this can be done — and should be done by people who feel called to it — in the context of the suburbs, it’s not where we’re at.

As an aside, another aspect of this week’s enigmatic desire to have a suburban life — which the wife very accurately pointed out has enough problems of its own since it’s also populated by people — might a sense of isolation I’ve had over the past few months. Working a more or less full time job away from the computer (along with still working my part-time M-DAT job mobilizing, breaking in a puppy and moving) has taken more getting used to than I expected. I miss blogging, being able to read blogs, being able to read substantial articles on the arts or theology during the week. I’m not a news junky by any stretch of the imagination, but I was disappointed to learn just this morning (in an email from M-DAT HQ) that there was a volcano disrupting air travel for mission trips. We also miss our network of artistically inclined friends back in Northwest Arkansas.

How any of this relates to a desire for a suburban life, which is typically associated with isolation itself, I don’t know. But my mind seems to want to make some kind of connection to it at the moment.

This is the view looking east on Third Street from our living room window. I thought it a bit ironic that just one of the buildings in this block lacks the apparently original(-ish) second-floor facade, and that that building houses an antique mall.

Antique stores are a staple of downtown Grand Island. My father’s business, the Milestone Gallery, joined the cadre of retailers selling old and used items about a year ago. Downtown Grand Island seems to be going in the right direction, although the revivification doesn’t appear as dramatic as in Siloam Springs on account of being a much larger area with many more buildings. More living spaces would help, as would a restaurant that isn’t focused on selling alcohol. A thai place is supposed to be going into the building labeled “Alley Cat” in the photo above. Others have come and gone in the past decade.

More will follow as I meet more of the people living and working in this part of the community.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHr8OzaloLM]

And secondly, an excerpt from The Suburban Nation (pages 117-118):

The plight of the suburban housewife was powerfully conveyed in a letter we received in 1990 from a woman living outside of Tulsa:

Dear Architects:

I am a mother of four children who are not able to leave the yard because of our city’s design. Ever since we have moved here I have felt like a caged animal only let out for a ride in the car. It is impossible to walk even to the grocery store two blocks away. If our family wants to go for a ride we need to load two cars with four bikes and a baby cart and drive four miles to the only bike path in this city of over a quarter million people. I cannot exercise unless I drive to a health club that I had to pay $300 to, and that is four and a half miles away. There is no sense of community here on my street, either, because we all have to drive around in our own little worlds that take us fifty miles a day to every corner of the surrounding five miles.

I want to walk somewhere so badly that I could cry. I miss walking! I want the kids to walk to school. I want to walk to the store for a pound of butter. I want to take the kids on a neighborhood stroll or bike. My husband wants to walk to work because it is so close, but none of these things is possible…And if you saw my neighborhood, you would think that I had it all according to the great American dream.

The town is making the most of the rebuilding opportunity. New structures replacing the tornadic debris are being built in the style of green. “Greensburg GreenTown is a Kansas-based nonprofit organization, providing inspiration and leadership to Kiowa County in order to be a model of sustainable living for the world.”

I’ve hoped for a similar initiative here in Siloam Springs, although I haven’t yet taken the time to propose it to the city. Still, it wouldn’t be the same kind of opportunity that Greensburg has, building from the ground up. Props to Greensburg for making lemonade of the lemon it was dealt two years ago.

Among the new green buildings is the 5.4.7 Arts Center, which is the 1st LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum building in Kansas according to its website.

Image from GreensburgKS.org

NPR’s Morning Edition made note today of the $8,000 tax credit Uncle Sam is offering to first-time home buyers. I’m not a first time buyer and, thus, haven’t given much thought to the offer. Quite a few people have though. According to the NPR spot, lower housing costs combined with the tax break have resulted in an upward trend among first-time buyers.

My office acquaintance who just bought a home — from the utterly inane and incompetent bureaucracy that remains of Countrywide — has brought it up in our conversations. For him it was an incentive; from what I can tell it wasn’t the deciding factor. He and his wife have been looking at houses for a while. On Monday, a friend noted over breakfast that he knows of two people planning to buy a house solely because of the tax credit, people who in his opinion have no business buying a home. I trust this friend’s judgment; he’s a financial counselor, in essence, for Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace program.

Could this be an unintended consequence of the stimulus, something the Obama administration failed to foresee? Will we end up with an entirely new set of individuals chained to mortgages they can’t afford, starting the vicious cycle over again — thanks to the federal government? The danger is real, although I hope it isn’t the case.

The Morning Edition spot pointed out that first time buyers’ ideas of what constitutes a starter home are less opulent than a few years ago. Wine cellars and the like have given way to practicality. “Peace of mind is the new must-have,” according to NPR.