The Small Town Project

There is more debunking to do! Growth and development myths are pernicious little creatures. Thankfully, some are based on such blatantly flawed bits of logic that we can do away with them with one hand tied behind our back. Well, figuratively speaking; I gotta type here. Let’s look at one I’ve heard applied to Mount Vernon. (I suspect you hear it around Lisbon too, but would appreciate any confirmation or correction.)

Myth #2 — “We need growth and so must continue building. But don’t worry, we won’t grow too big — only out to the city limits.”

Okay, so those two sentences together are more an error of logic than a myth per se. (Still, the first sentence is simply a broader version of the myth we exploded in our last article.) But raise your hand if you already see the problem here. Seriously, I’ve heard each of the two sentences above multiple times from MV city officials. No, probably not right in sequence as they’re written here, but so what; these are two ideas that some in power accept and espouse without blinking.

We’re Doomed!
For those of you who still haven’t had your second cup of coffee, I’ll come right out with it: If we truly “need” continual growth, yet are aiming at fixed city limits beyond which we cannot build, our town is doomed! We’ll reach the city limits, be forced to stop growing, then see our town die without its lifeblood — subdivision construction. (This is not to mention that if we get big enough to reach the city limits, our town, be it MV or Lisbon, will no longer be what it is now, having lost much of its small town character to the homogenization of sprawl, thus having effectively “died” anyway.)

Ignore for a moment that, in reality, residential development is not an economic plus, but is typically a drag on a town’s economy. Pretend for a moment that such construction is currently sustaining MV economically. Now, could it be that when we run out of room to grow, MV will not in fact die? Might we instead find other ways of supporting our economy and continuing into the future as an economically viable town? Of course we will, assuming people care enough about the town to approach its problems thoughtfully.

This means that in a few years, when we’ve reached the city limits, we’ll be finding other solutions to our economic problems and will no longer “need” subdivision construction to sustain us.

An Idea!
Here’s an idea: Let’s do it now instead!

We can just stop the growth now, and do whatever we would do when we ran out of room. That way MV and Lisbon can remain the small towns we love, without their small town character being obliterated by an explosion of sprawl. (”Explosion” may seem like a strong word, but wait till we get into the topic of “exponential growth” before drawing any conclusions about the word choice.)

Subdivisions are no Solution
Clearly, even if residential development were, for now, an economic boon, it would be no solution. The real solution lies in something else, something sustainable which won’t hit a wall in a few years forcing us to scan our options, desperately looking for an alternative to that process which, for a time, brought in some tax money, but ruined our towns. (Again, don’t forget that in the real world we could boost our economy right now simply by stopping all subdivision development.)

Some readers may have noticed a possible catch in the scenario just described. It hinges on the assertion on the part of some officials that we can’t or won’t grow past the city limits. Will we, or won’t we? The truth is elusive. We’ll look at that in an upcoming article, and we’ll show how dismal our towns’ futures would be in a scenario of continual land annexation.