The Regional Divide and the Future of Small Towns
Paul Collits
Manager Regional Policy, New South Wales Department of State and Regional Development
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Faculty of the Built Environment, University of New South Wales
Presentation to the "From Strength to Strength" Regional Development Conference, Timaru, New Zealand, September 2003
> >Speech Notes
Background Paper
Strategies for Small Towns
There is an extremely rich literature emerging with clues as to rural community survival, much of it from North America and much reflecting the experiences of practitioners.
There are three levels of strategy for small towns to pursue. The first strategy for survival consists of "things to do". The second, and perhaps more important, consists of "things to be". A third, consists of "things to know".
"Things to do" include the following:
- Population retention;
- Population attraction;
- Tourism based revival;
- Innovative planning;
- Creative enclaves;
- Festivals and events.
Remember that competitive advantage can be created. It is not just about climate and soils but about marketing, finding niches and giving customers what they want. It is also about addressing the three Es, especially for young people - education, employment and excitement.
"Things to be" include:
- Communities must be nimble and adaptable. Sorensen has in fact recently argued that sustainability is now essentially about the capacity to re-invent one's community;
- Communities should be open to new people, new lifestyles and new ideas;
- Communities should be business friendly;
- Communities should network with others to find new opportunities.
"Things to know" include:
- Information on the local economy;
- The factors that drive success;
- The constraints on action.
Communities have to come to grips with regional realities but don't be defeated by them. They need to understand context - local economic development must recognise that regional economies are open and resources - people, capital, labour - will continue to come and go.
Summing Up
A number of conclusions can be drawn from the foregoing analysis:
- The decline of many small towns is real and affects many places;
- While the phenomenon of small town decline is not new, it has intensified in the last ten years;
- Much of the current debate about the state of crisis in regional Australia, and the anger directed at governments, relates to small towns in particular - they (not larger regional centres) are the places in decline; they are the places losing young people and skills; they are the places that have seen their services and infrastructure eroded;
- While the decline of small towns is not confined to New South Wales or indeed Australia, it cannot solely be explained by forces of natural selection. Government actions and inaction have contributed to small town decline;
- Governments have begun to take small town decline seriously;
- There are serious constraints on what governments can do to save small towns, just as there are constraints on regional policy formulation generally;
- There are inevitable contradictions and difficult choices for government in attempting to formulate a small towns policy;
- The case for greater government attention to small towns must inevitably and ultimately turn on equity arguments about access social capital and a sense of place. Traditional economic and political arguments for regional policies generally, described in the regional development literature, do not necessarily apply in the case of small towns.
The future of small towns is not guaranteed. Some of the reasons why small towns decline do relate purely to their lack of critical mass, and critical mass is important. Yet it is clear that not all towns will decline, that "decline" is not inevitable for every town, that communities have within their power the capacity to create competitive advantage, and that decline may be in the eye of the beholder in any case. Growth is not the only indicator of regional well being.
Should we be misty eyed about small town decline? Probably not, since many of the drivers of small town decline relate to human decisions at the local level. We (small town residents) are the ones that prefer to shop at the nearby regional centre rather than locally. We will give up the local air service if we can drive a couple of hours to catch a larger, quicker flight to the capital city. We are the ones that invest in real estate in the city to capture better returns on investment. We are the ones that by-pass local suppliers if we can get a better deal on the internet. We are the ones that send our children off to the outside world to get a better life.
There is no doubt that small town survival poses a challenge for government. The inclinations of governments are to "cover all bases", in other words to seek to help growing places as well as declining places, and not to devote particular attention to the hardest problems - the "slow burn" small town decline
I have not yet found sufficient reason for the people living in small towns to give up the fight for what Peter Ellyard has called "thrival". While it is likely that many smaller towns will continue to lose population in societies like Australia and New Zealand, there are significant straws in the wind that bode well for smaller communities - the retreat from the city, the coming of IT opportunities, the preference for high amenity living, the growing wealth of many in the community, and, since September 2001, fear. The news is not all bad. And we should have realistic expectations and a view of "success" that relates to quality of life and that is not totally focused on growth.
There is also an imperative on the part of communities and local economic developers to work to achieve well being. Their efforts should be based on supportive government, local leadership and a realistic understanding of both the possibilities and the limits of local action and of the power of economic and social change.
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