Book review: Promise of America’s Smaller Industrial Cities

Posted by National Housing Institute on April 13, 2015

We May Be Small, But…
Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America’s Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World, by Catherine Tumber. MIT Press, 2012

By Miriam Axel-Lute Posted on February 4, 2015

I live in the small city of Albany, N.Y., which I often describe as the best of both worlds—public transit, walkable neighborhoods, culture, diversity, but also a bit of a small town social feel. (We call it Smalbany.) We also enjoy local food that hasn’t traveled far, an affordable cost of living, and quick access to green space in every direction.

That perspective is part of why I was lucky enough to be a researcher and writer for PolicyLink’s 2007 report on smaller cities—To Be Strong Again: Renewing the Promise in Smaller Industrial Cities. In that report we observed both the up and down sides of small cities. We are, for example, often left out of national policy discussions and are less likely to be home to major corporate headquarters, foundations, or even branches of community development intermediaries. The research led me to an acute awareness of how often small cities, which are home to millions of people, are overlooked.

So imagine my delight to discover Small, Gritty, and Green. Written by Catherine Tumber, an urban upstate New York native, it focuses on small cities and their particular potential for the low-carbon future we need to be moving toward.

Tumber has a counter-narrative to the Richard Florida–type predictions that the larger cities are going to continue spreading into ever-larger mega regions, and those places left behind will wither away. To Tumber’s eyes (like mine) small cities are able to offer the best of both worlds. In one example, she argues that what is often considered a small city weakness, namely, overreliance on an old manufacturing base, can, if it’s captured before the skills and infrastructure are lost, be parlayed into perfect locations for green manufacturing—from solar to electric cars. What seem like unrealistic pipe dreams about rebooted manufacturing sectors to the many “realists” who want everyone to retool only in service of the “knowledge economy,” appear much more plausible after Tumber takes you on a detailed tour through some of these regions, their workforces, and the industries who are interested in them.

http://www.shelterforce.org/article/4033/we_may_be_small_but/