Small Cities Weekly | 11.24.2023
Local Legibility, Small City Transit, & Truth in Detail
As part of the work we are doing on the Small City Segment, we send out a brief weekly post of thoughts, links, and research in progress that reflect the week’s work. I’d love to hear from you if you have any thoughts, questions, disagreements, or things to add. Please forward this on to people you think might enjoy reading it.
Local News & Legibility
In the first Small City Segment post, I talked about the relation between local news and the legibility of small city problems:
Decline of local news: as local news has decreased out over past few decades, there are less 3rd party entities diving deep into how these problems work, who they affect, and sharing those findings publicly. There are some non-profits and foundations that take up some of this work, but they are mostly catering to a public policy audience, not current or potential startup founders.
What I didn’t understand at the time was this wasn’t the only dynamic happening between news and the legibility of these problems. Over the last five months, I’ve explored a lot of local newspapers. And as frustrating as the dynamic of less local coverage is, it’s even more frustrating that the coverage that does exist is governed by a business model that limits reach.
Almost every small city newspaper I’ve come across is paywalled right from the get-go. I have no problem with paying for journalism. But it doesn’t make sense for me to subscribe to papers all over the country - it makes sense for me to subscribe to the South Bend Tribune. And therein lies the legibility problem. Unless you’re committed to the journalism of one particular city, understanding what’s going on in any particular city at any particular time is actually really difficult. Trying to get an understanding of problems common across many cities? Nearly impossible.
We can’t expect new and innovative solutions when it is so hard to learn about the problems from those closest to them. I don’t know what the better answer is here, but we need one.
Links
How Your City’s Public Transit Stacks Up, Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight (2014)
“Among all 290 cities, there’s a clear relationship between trips per resident and both total population (the r-squared is 0.41) and population density (r-squared = 0.21). This means that it’s not particularly revealing to map all the cities together, because larger, denser cities are clustered in the Northeast and on the West Coast. But if we look only at the 248 urban areas with fewer than 1 million residents, the total population relationship (r-squared = 0.0002) and population density relationship (r-squared = 0.07) disappear.”
I found this as part of my research into transportation and employment. The data is a bit old, but I’d bet that the dynamics today are similar. The most interesting thing is that in addition to the wide gap between the large metros and small cities, amongst small cities, there is a wide variance of public transportation use.
The Work Begins, Nathaniel Marshall, The Blue Scholar
“I am, by trade, a plumber. I currently serve as a full-time plumbing instructor for my employer’s trade academy, the same employer I began with in June of 2015, long before our academy existed. Through my time in the field as a residential service plumber, my time in our office at various levels of management, and now as someone privileged to pass on knowledge of this trade to those who have quite literally never seen a pair of pliers before, I’ve had opportunities to think about what work means and that pretty much sums up the essence of The Blue Scholar: exploring the meaning of work, primarily and especially (but not exclusively) manual labor.”
This whole Substack is worth reading, but I really enjoyed Nathaniel’s intro post. A lot of small cities are tied closely to trades of different sorts, most of which seem to loose relevance day by day as advances in technology dominate the discussion about what “work” is. His essays here are a great look into what it means to be part of the trades today and how it’s more than just a “it’s a good paying job with stable prospects” proposition.
The Truth is Always Made of Details, David Cain
“Playing with resolution applies to ideas too. The higher the resolution at which you explore a topic, the more surprising and idiosyncratic it becomes. If you’ve ever made a good-faith effort to “get to the bottom” of a contentious question — Is drug prohibition justifiable? Was Napoleon an admirable figure? — you probably discovered that it’s endlessly complicated. Your original question keeps splitting into more questions. Things can be learned, and you can summarize your findings at any point, but there is no bottom.”
This perfectly describes what I’ve found while exploring small cities over the last five months. As I keep going deeper and deeper it only becomes more surprising - which is a fun dynamic while also living in a small city. It makes me ask daily questions that I never would have thought to prior.
He Lived a Frugal Life. Then He Left Millions to His New Hampshire Town., Sopan Deb, NYTimes
“Geoffrey Holt, the caretaker of a mobile home park in Hinsdale, N.H., did little to stand out and mostly kept to himself, at least as far as Kathryn Lynch, the town administrator, knew.
“He would sit on Route 119 and kick back and watch the traffic go by,” she said. “People really didn’t know who he was,” she added. “I mean, I didn’t even know what his name was.”
Mr. Holt had blended in for decades in Hinsdale, a town with a population of about 4,000, often sitting on his riding mower in the trailer park where he lived until his death in June at 82.
But he died with a secret that will change Hinsdale for years to come: He was a multimillionaire. And in his will, he had decided to leave all his wealth — $3.8 million — to his adopted hometown.”
A bonus link for your Thanksgiving weekend - I just really like this story.
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