Community Development: Economic Gardening, Not an Elephant Hunt

Here's another helping from today's Madville Times all-you-can-eat economic development buffet:

Mrs. Madville Times is on a tear: she finds this article talking about small prairie towns giving away land, not to big corporations, but to working families who will help the communities grow one house at a time. Call it the community-level New Homestead Act, a national version of which Senators Dorgan, Johnson, Hagel, Brownback, and others have been trying to get through the Senate since 2003.

As Mrs. Madville Times puts it, this approach to community development isn't a quick fix. It's slower, it's deeper... but it's prettier, richer, and more rooted in the end. The article explains that it's a change in development philosophy:

Today, "elephant hunting" — going after the big company — is giving way to "economic gardening."

The new mantra is don't waste time and money trolling for a major employer; instead, build one family at a time. Encourage small-business start-ups and develop aggressive local leaders. Fight "brain drain" by reaching into high schools and finding students willing to return after college. Nurture them with internships or hitch them to a business owner looking to retire. [Sound familiar?]

Ask seniors to will 5% of their estates to the town they love to endow economic development. Preach entrepreneurship and the promise of the Internet economy.

Perhaps 30 towns, mostly in the upper Midwest, have embraced this "hometown competitiveness" strategy developed by the Center for Rural Entrepreneurship in Lincoln, Neb. Word is spreading, co-director Don Macke says: "There's been an explosion of interest, particularly in the last 24 months."

When the W.K. Kellogg Foundation announced it would award $8 million in grants for four rural entrepreneurship centers, more than 180 communities applied.

For more than 150 years, rural America thrived because it had a competitive advantage: low-cost land and labor. Today, other countries have seized that advantage.

"Rural places have to find a new way to compete, and that comes from being entrepreneurial. It's a necessity," says Jason Henderson, senior economist with the Center for the Study of Rural America at the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City, Mo [John Ritter, "Towns Offer Free Land to Newcomers," USA Today, 2005.02.08; reprinted online by HomeTown Competitiveness].

Looking to revitalize your small town? Listen to my wife. If you don't believe me, believe about a thousand articles out there that say the same thing: small towns don't need big companies to survive. We can build economically and culturally vibrant communities with our own resources, one new family, one creative entrepreneur, one new small business at a time.