What happens when an entire region of rural communities buys into the same bad approach to development?
For more than 40 years, James Ulring has worked on the road. First as a cattle buyer and as a salesman, now as a timber broker, Ulring has visited hundreds of small towns across the Midwest over the last several decades. In fact, he visits about a hundred rural communities every year, returning again and again to many of the same places.
What this means is that Ulring has been able to witness firsthand what few people have. He has seen up-close how rural towns, from one end of the Midwest to the other, have been pursuing the same tragically flawed approach to growth and development. And he has seen the inevitable result of that flawed approach—an entire region of rural communities in awful decline.
James Ulring lives in Decorah, Iowa, a picturesque town not far from the Minnesota border. Decorah has a population of about 7,700, but it is also the home of Luther College, a private, liberal-arts college with an enrollment of about 2,300. We met Ulring when he invited us to visit Decorah as part of the Strong America Tour. The more we got to know him, the more we heard and learned from his forty-plus years of close observation of rural America, the more convinced we became that we needed to share his insights with you. Ulring told me about the familiar pattern of growth and decline he’s seen in one town after another, why many rural communities don’t feel in charge of their own destiny, what could happen as an entire region of small towns start to fail at the same time, and why even the lucky communities—the “company towns” and the towns with small colleges (including his own)—may be more fragile than they realize.
This week is Fall Member Drive here at Strong Towns. This is the week we ask for your help to help us spread the Strong Towns message not just to every city and suburb in North America, but to rural communities struggling to imagine a better future for themselves. More than 40% of our annual budget comes in the form of recurring gifts from our members. We really are a bottom-up revolution. Will you become a member of the Strong Towns movement today and help us turn the tide for rural communities?
(This week only, new members that sign up at $10 or more per month will get an autographed copy of the new Strong Towns book, along with the lost chapter, companion reading list, and an invitation to the inaugural book club coming January 2020).
James Ulring.
STRONG TOWNS
You’ve been on the road since the early 1970s. In that time, how have you seen small towns change?
ULRING
I imagine my observations would be similar to anyone my age who has been paying attention. Once upon a time, these small- and medium-sized towns would have a downtown that was well anchored with good stores. A couple of men's clothing stores, maybe a J.C. Penney, a Ben Franklin or a Montgomery Wards or Sears or something like that. There'd be a chain store, and then multiple family-owned businesses. It was the classic, middle-America downtown we all dream of.
That downtown would be surrounded by well-built homes. Depending on when the town was founded, you might see Victorian prairie-style homes from the turn of the 20th century, then well-built bungalow-type homes from the 1920s through perhaps the 1960s. Very natural, organic growth.
These traditional towns were similar in many ways. There might be some small changes depending on where the industry of the town is. If it's a riverfront town or a railroad town, there may be some variations on that theme…but overall very similar.
But the subsequent changes have been similar too: the hollowing out of the core of the community, starting with the good, two- and three-story brick buildings downtown. Then a decline in that high-quality housing around it.
Invariably, as you’re watching the center of town fall apart, you’re seeing people move out to the suburbs. Even in a small town, you see development on the edge of town. I see towns that are completely dead, or virtually dead, in the center of town, yet they still have 20 or 30 newer homes, including some very new homes on the far edge. These are usually retired people who have connections to the community. Many of them are in late retirement, and they’re going to be the last owners of homes in those towns.
STRONG TOWNS
What has the temptation been for these towns? Why are they making these development choices?
ULRING
They're told to. Very few small- or medium-sized communities feel in charge of their own destiny. They look at the growth of Chicago and Minneapolis, and they think the dynamic part of the economy takes place on the edges. There is also a traditional Midwestern belief that the symbol of wealth is a new home…even if they already own a beautiful older home. You’re seeing this even with farmers. Because of how farming has changed, it’s easy to live 10 to 20 miles from the farm. So people move to the edge of town to be with their buddies there, even though the town itself is collapsing.
STRONG TOWNS
You just touched on something I was going to ask you about. Because of your work you had a front row seat to the farm crisis of the 1980s as well. Do you see a connection between the choices these rural communities are making related to development, and the pressures facing farmers?
ULRING
There is a connection for sure, and I think the pressures have only accelerated since the 1980s. For decades, farmers have been told, “Get modern or get out.”
STRONG TOWNS
Right. Earl Butz’s [the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture from 1971-1976] famous directive to farmers to “Get big or get out.”
ULRING
Yes. These farms entered into a growth phase at the same time. And the damage was not just financial, it was sociological and cultural. Into the early 1970s, it was common for the firstborn son or daughter to come back from college and say, “Dad, I want to start farming with you.” Boomers were taking over the farms from the “G.I. Generation,” who had taken over the farm after the war, maybe when their fathers and grandfathers were living on the farm. Almost every one of those farms was in the transition to “get big” and “get modern” when the farm crisis struck. They were trying to make the farms bigger and more efficient. They were investing capital at 18% interest, and then the rug got pulled out. What that means is that we lost not only a lot of farms but a whole generation of famers.
STRONG TOWNS
Maybe this is too simplistic—so feel free to push back—but is it fair to say that, at the same time farmers were being told to “Get big or get out,” the small towns started thinking: “You know what, if we're really going to be relevant, we need to get bigger. We need to start developing out on the edges because that’s what people want.”
ULRING
Absolutely. There's no question that the push for suburban development came at the same time. I think city planners just thought, "Well, the next town over is doing this, so let's do it too." All these young people were coming out of college, coming into their own, and looking for a place to live. There was huge demand for housing, and they thought this was the way to go. Infrastructure costs were still relatively cheap in the 60s and 70s. People saw this as progress. I’m not sure how many saw the defects of suburban development or the costs to community long-term.
Plus, the American way is “Grow or die,” right? I’ve traveled to dozens of different countries. My biggest experience overseas is working in Japan, a country with thousands of years of culture. They ask me what America is like, and I say, “Well, you have to remember America becomes a new country every 20 years.”
Slideshow: Hoxie, Kansas (1960s-2017)
STRONG TOWNS
What are some of the specific choices you've seen communities make that have turned out to be either disastrous or a disaster-in-the-making?
ULRING
People want to says it’s Amazon or Walmart, but I think those are sideline issues. The issue is the system we’ve created. The system is unsustainable. I’ve known this since before I’d ever heard of Strong Towns. You can look at these towns and see the material failure. You drive through a downtown and see all the empty storefronts. I wonder to myself why they don’t convert the storefronts to residential and bring people back downtown and into these big, beautiful buildings. Instead, city planners have been saying, “Let’s get people as far away as possible from these problems.” And so, in a lot of towns I work in, there is a tremendous amount of development moving into unincorporated areas that aren’t really part of the community.
STRONG TOWNS
Something you and I share is our love of the Midwest. Even though I now live in Oregon, which is where I was born and where my family's from, I spent my formative years in the Midwest and I still think of Midwesterners as “my people.” I mention that because my heart actually breaks when I think of a whole region of towns pursuing the same failed approaches to development. Thinking regionally, do you have a sense or a prediction of the impact that the decisions of all of these individual communities will have on the region as a whole? I'm asking you to look into your crystal ball.
ULRING
We’re seeing the impact already. We see it in Detroit, in Muskegon, in Gary, Indiana. It’s being repeated in communities large and small—in towns I go to Iowa, in Nebraska, in Illinois, and Northern Missouri. In many cases, the only thing holding them together is an inflow of capital money, perhaps in the form of a hospital or schools…if they are big enough to hang on to their schools. Many of them are down to just a few public service jobs: a small police department or sheriff’s department, a tiny little county office.
There are always exceptions. There are communities that know they are going to have to be competitive, that they have to offer something. Maybe they spend a quick $2 or $3 million to build an industrial park. In the past some of these small towns have been able to steal a factory from Chicago. A company might have moved so they didn’t have to fix the old factory or deal with a union. That was the saving grace for a few towns. But that game is over too, because we’re not adding industrial jobs anymore. These little Midwestern communities have made an effort. But I would like to know the number of infrastructure acres spent on empty industrial parks in the Midwest. I bet it’s tens of thousands of acres. And there will never be anything in there. They will sit empty of thirty years.
To get back to your original question, what I see in the crystal ball: I think there is going to be a tremendous number of community bankruptcies over the next few decades. The federal government will step in and try to hold them together. But I don’t know how these towns are going to make it work. I just visited a tiny town that spent a $2 million USDA grant to put in a community sewer system. There are maybe 40 homes there worth an average of $25,000 apiece. That’s a million dollars of taxable land in the community. And they just spent twice that putting in a community sewer system.
STRONG TOWNS
A decade ago the federal government stepped in and decided there were certain banks that were “too big to fail.” My concern, as somebody who loves these small towns that are careening toward bankruptcy, is that the federal government is going to say, “We’ve decided you’re small enough to fail.”
ULRING
No question, there's going to be a lot of that. Many places will just be gone.
And it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Every small town I visit in the Midwest has the same infrastructure. I see a brand-new fire station, a brand-new police station, a brand-new city hall. All mostly paid for by federal and maybe some state money. Brand new fire trucks, brand new police vehicles. I've seen little tiny towns of 500 people with an armored Humvee they were given. They can’t even afford the gas it needs! And we’re talking communities that have one murder every five years. It’s insane. What use could they have for it? I see other infrastructure going up that won’t generate a dollar of revenue; these towns won’t be able to afford to maintain it.
Unless these towns have a small college or are home to a company that invests a lot of money in the town—like the Schwan’s Company in Marshall, Minnesota or Pella in Pella, Iowa—they are going to struggle.
Even many small-town banks have no way transferring the bank from the current generation to the next, because of complex banking laws. They’re going to get bought up for sure by the mid-sized banks. And then the mid-size banks will get bought up by the big banks. These are small community banks with $200 million in deposits. They are cornerstones of many small communities. Most of those banks are going to disappear over the next 30 years, and that will be very hard on these communities.
Downtown Decorah. Image source.
STRONG TOWNS
You mentioned that some of these small towns have small colleges there. That’s true of your own town of Decorah, Iowa, which is home to Luther College. So far, has your town been able to buck the trend of what you're seeing in other small Midwestern towns?
ULRING
Oh, absolutely. We're completely insulated because of the $150 million influx of revenue from the college. I don't know exactly their revenue per year, but it’s perhaps $100 to $150 million dollars, coming almost exclusively from outside of our community—Minneapolis, Chicago, Omaha.
Most communities can’t lean on a college or being a “company town.” They’re going to have to be more creative. But I would say to those college and factory towns that we may think we’re immune, but we’re not. We have to look for good answers, like Strong Towns is trying to do.
STRONG TOWNS
I’ve read that between one-quarter and one-half of all colleges and universities are predicted to close in the next few years.
ULRING
Yes, and it will devastate a lot of these communities.
STRONG TOWNS
Putting all your eggs in one basket is—to use a word we use a lot at Strong Towns—very fragile.
ULRING
Yes, I love that word. We're building systems that are complicated and fragile rather than complex and resilient. I see that fragility all the time, every day. That’s why I wanted to bring Strong Towns to Decorah. Because even though we think of ourselves as being more resilient than the average town, the reality is that we're fragile too.
STRONG TOWNS
I was going to ask you why you wanted to bring the Strong America Tour to Decorah. Is that why?
ULRING
Yes. That and love of the community. We need to have the discussion right away, and actually bringing Chuck here was a way to start a conversation. In January, we’re going to start reading Strong Towns together like a book club.
STRONG TOWNS
Wow.
ULRING
It’s going to be like a book club but more than that too. It’s going to be the center of a conversation. It will include community people as well as the movers and shakers. After we read the book, we’re going to ask, “Okay, what does this mean for our community? How do we take this information and begin thinking differently about our town? How do we make our town less fragile?"
STRONG TOWNS
That's so great. Do you mind if I asked you one more question? I’m just curious: how and when did you first hear about Strong Towns?
ULRING
It was about two years ago. I think I was probably just looking online for some information. Because I was constantly seeing this deterioration in front of my eyes, I said, “There has to be some changes.”
I had done small amounts of very cursory research on my own. I'd ask engineers questions like, "Why do we do it this way? This is stupid. My kids won't even be able to pay for the maintenance on these choices we're making.” It’s costing us so much money just to build a mile of road, and we’re getting no revenue. I'm a money guy, and I’m thinking, “This doesn't make sense.” I've been a businessman my whole life. When you invest millions of dollars, there has to be some return; it’s just simple math. But the simple math isn’t working anymore.
And so, that's where my journey started, just asking the questions. I found reference to this on Strong Towns and just kept digging from there.
I'm glad you guys are having such a great tour. I'm glad Chuck came to our community. I'm thankful because it is beginning the conversation, which is what I wanted to do. And I think it's timely for our country as a whole to look at these things. We have to do it. We need to deal with these issues across the board. We have to do it for our kids because we're going to hand them things they can't even begin to get their arms around.
Image Credits
Hoxie, Kansas Slideshow
Google Maps (2017)
Cover photo via Eric Muhr.
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