Small Town Revitalization?

Time for a short break from DSL congestion stuff.

This is an interesting article. The premise is that increasing fuel prices are encouraging small town residents to shop, work and play closer to home rather than driving off to do these in a nearby larger centre. Local business and employment is up, and so is the tax base.

That's good, right? Short term, sure. I am just not sure it is sustainable.

The benefit of cheap gas is the ability to reap the pleasures of small town livings (and big city suburbs I suppose) and of the big city. Expensive gas is causing people to make a choice because it just got too expensive to have both.

If people believe the spike in fuel prices is short term, their coping mechanism is to not venture far from the small town or countryside where they live. If high fuel prices are sustained, this could have the opposite and devastating effect on those same small towns.

Will those people who want but can no longer have both, and need to make a long-term commitment to one or other, pick the small town? Won't they quite likely choose instead to move (back) to the big city? This is already a decades-long trend that has not been at all affected by historically cheap gas.

Once they make that decision, the small town loses the people, the taxes, the jobs, the local social scene, and well pretty much everyone a small town needs to thrive. The question is how many people need to choose between small and large towns, and how many of those choose the city. Many of those who want both, and moved to the small towns to get it, are likely already more favourably disposed toward the city. In the long run this would further devastate small towns. Perhaps some will trade in their SUVs for smaller vehicles to gain a little more time, though I don't think that'll help for long.

Small towns, I believe, are threatened, not helped in the long run by high fuel prices.