There are 19,500 incorporated cities in the U.S. and more than 14,700 are under 5,000 people. Half of them shrinking or have no growth. In the scholarship of urbanism, towns are overlooked and understudied. The examples here, taken from across the United States, make visible the creative solutions and stories that are enabling towns to remain vibrant and viable in the face of sprawl, population loss and disinvestment, and how these challenges play out politically at a local level. The research provides a new lens for contemporary urbanism today; urbanism that is not metro-centric or based on the congested city but rather advances qualities of life for smaller municipalities through creative, tactical and strategic transformations that frequently lack the capacity to achieve success. The projects highlighted will be published in a book by Routledge Press in 2024 titled "Rebuilding the American Town".
Small towns are addressing economic sustainability through the localization of services and industries as counters to the globalized extractive economies that deplete local capital. Often the losers in globalization - including the redistribution of talent to large cities - small towns are rapidly adopting strategies of cooperation while using technology to stay networked to the wider world.
Learning Objectives:
1. Highlight the inherent complexities and opportunities of urban planning and design interventions in small towns, including agents of change, timelines and implementation barriers.
2. Evaluate contemporary design and infrastructures that are right-sized to the communities they serve to be transformational.
1. Demonstrate the value propositions of towns (because of the pandemic and remote/hybrid work) through niche development strategies as alternatives to orthodox capital formation in cities that dominate planning literature.
