Next seminar guest – Mom Most Traveled
Our next smallwander.com phone/web seminar will be on a closed-circuit Skype call this Monday, August 25. However, you will be able to catch the podcast by downloading it from this blog, if I handle the technology of recording it OK.
Our guest will be the proprietor of Mom Most Traveled. Her blog discusses all things about traveling with small children and living with them in foreign lands that are not necessarily kid-friendly. Pick up some valuable tips from the podcast, once it’s posted.
We’ll go back to the call-in format for our next seminar on September 29. Our seminars are always on the last Monday of the month at 10 am. Subscribe to this blog for updates.
Buy local podcast
Leon Tongret and Greta Lint discuss how buying locally helps small towns.
Subscribe to podcast in Itunes.
Mercedes to go gas free by 2015
Read Phil Lanning’s article about it in The Sun.
More about big companies in small towns
From Blogging Stocks…
Big company, small town: Corning Inc., Corning, New York
This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.
Rest assured, the first decade of the 21st century is not likely to be remembered as a renaissance period in U.S. history. No one will confuse this decade with the Roaring ’20s or even the Wonderful ’90s.
Further, if the nation needs an example of rebirth and renewal — it would be hard to find a better one than the story of multinational corporation Corning (NYSE: GLW), nestled in the small town of Corning, New York.
Corning is your classic, feel-good American success story. And doesn’t the United States need a few of those today?
Moreover, Corning, arguably, represents one of the signature corporate transformation stories of the digital age.
NC STEP program training
I am presenting with Greta Lint at an NC Small Town Economic Prosperity (STEP) program training event. Greta is giving a presentation titled “Using Tourism to Stimulate Your Town’s Economy,” including a marketing 101 segment. My presentation, “Y-Web,” will touch on ways these communities can use technology to promote their towns.
The NC STEP program is sponsored by the North Carolina Rural Center to support small towns under 10,000 that are sturggling to overcome economic hardship through training, technological initiatives, and other strategies.
Why smaller is sometimes better
From Blogging Stocks
When the big company leaves the small town
This post opens our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered. Watch for more Big Company, Small Town posts coming soon.
All across this great country of ours, small cities, towns, and villages have been built in the shadows of major companies that supply work for their local populations. It can be a wonderful situation that cultivates a special kind of community and a deep-seated local pride. However, it can also be a recipe for civic disaster, if the major supplier of a wage base in a locality goes out of business or leaves town. Such was the near disastrous fate of Park Falls, Wisconsin, not so long ago.
The city of Park Falls, which is Wisconsin’s most geographically isolated city, was built around its paper mill. At its height, the mill helped to bring the population of the city to nearly 4,000 inhabitants. However, in 2006 the paper mill, which was operating at reduced capacity under ownership from out of state, was shut down almost without any prior notice. The result was immediate and deeply wrenching turmoil. Not only had the paper mill workers lost an excellent source of income, but the collateral damage was jarringly significant also. Loggers had no local market for their pulp wood. Dozens of family-feeding log trucks were idled. Private contractors who did various types of work for the mill were left with thousands of dollars worth of unpaid invoices. Local vendors, retailers, and support businesses almost immediately went slack.
More on the collapse of suburbia
CNN: American dream has faded into suburban nightmare
Posted on June 17, 2008 by Brian Cesarotti
The collapse of the American dream or the beginning of a new one?
That’s the issue Lara Farrar explores in an article on CNN.com, relaying a story of how the once typical suburb of Elk Grove, California has turned into an abandoned, unkept, haven for young criminals. The foreclosures resulting from the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the increasing desire to live in a walkable community has one University of Michigan urban planning professor predicting a large shift toward “walkable urbanism” as already seen by Atlanta, Detroit and Dallas. Instead of labeling the American dream has “dying” he instead says it is “changing.” This view isn’t shared by everyone. The homeowner featured in the story says he would not want to move out of a suburban setting.
“”It’s the American dream, you know,” he said. “The American dream.”
Nevertheless, urban planning professor Christopher Leinberger predicts half of the urban development in 2025 will not have existed in 2000. In addition, about 22 million “McMansions” will be occupied by the several lower class families. This seems to be the only way to overcome the massive misallocation of resources that has been suburban development.
Thirty-five percent of the nation’s wealth, according to Leinberger, has been invested in constructing this drivable suburban landscape.
Suburbs are out
From Confessions of a Small-Church Pastor:
The Decline of the Suburbs
CNN notes today that 40% of Americans want to live in “walkable” communities, and that the suburbs as we know them may be an endangered species. The subprime mortgage crisis, which put many people in homes they could not afford, has led to record foreclosures, bankruptcies and repossessions. Some homeowners, facing falling home values, are abandoning their dream homes altogether.
Professor Arthur C. Nelson contends that by 2025, America will face a surplus of 22-million large lot (suburban) homes. Some suburban developments are noticing an increase in crime, unkempt lawns, graffitti covered sidewalks, and other signs of “suburban decay” which is the same as urban decay, only in a different neighborhood.
Travel to Main Street to shop–by train
Here is an interesting post from teaberries in All the Little Stuff That is Life.
“What I’m saying, is 1) bring back Main Street shopping, only maybe this time, we need to base it on more European models of villages and towns. 2) It’s time for the big-box retailers to break themselves down, and start fitting into the mold of small town America. Then 3) reform transportation, start using trains again. This country has thousands of small towns, and hundreds of miles of railroad tracks connecting them. Use them, again. Refer, again, to Europe and Japan.”
Press release about new website
New Website, smallwander.com, Promotes Small Towns and Offers Training for Merchants, Leaders
05-30-2008
HILLSBOROUGH, NC – Searching for travel information about small towns? A new Website, www.smallwander.com, has just been launched to help you. It features charming walkable towns with fewer than 10,000 people, cultural or historical heritage and locally-owned businesses, including accommodations. Towns must feature a distinct viable downtown, not one spread out or one with lots of empty store-fronts.
The idea is that you can park your car, wander, shop, eat and spend a day or two without having to get back into your car until you leave the town…