It’s easy to think that urban policy is solely about big cities and their surrounding suburbs, much in the way that one would naturally believe that farm policy is solely about farm regions. A quick perusal of the statistics suggests that America is indeed an urban nation despite its vast swaths of open land and its origins as an agrarian society. The Census Bureau reports that 86% of Americans live in metropolitan areas. However, most of those metros are smaller ones. A Washington Post analysis found that 47% of Americans live in metropolitan areas smaller than 1.5-million people. That’s still a hefty percentage of the American population. Around 8% of Americans live in micropolitan areas — generally small cities that serve as a hub for a rural region. There’s a lot going on in those places, too.
Writing in Strong Towns about Staunton, Va., a 26,000-population city in the Shenandoah Valley, urbanist Addison Del Mastro notes that this small, walkable city “is a fantastic reminder that urbanism and density do not necessarily mean big cities. The town, a form as old and hallowed as anything in America, is urban too, though it is neglected in a ‘suburbs vs. cities’ false dichotomy. There’s no real reason why suburban population nodes — places where large highways are flanked by a couple of miles of subdivisions, hotels, strip malls, and fast food outlets — could not instead be built, at least in a denser, more walkable, and more fine-grained form.”
Whatever the merits of his urban-planning vision, we agree wholeheartedly with his conclusion that urbanism is not merely about big cities. Small cities, especially those that struggle more with a stagnant rather than growing population or economy, have challenges that differ from bigger cities, but innovative urban policy is important in these places, also. That idea is the genesis of this booklet. We’re publishing case studies of three cities that don’t spark many urban-policy headlines. It’s a largely random grouping, chosen mainly because our three authors have personal knowledge of them. Their randomness actually is the point: These are nice, overlooked places of the sort where most of the American population lives. Around 85 million Americans live in the nation’s 10 most-populous metropolitan areas, which leaves 255-million people living elsewhere.
These three cities are Stockton, Calif., Spokane, Wash., and Hillsdale, Mich. Stockton is a useful choice for a deep dive because, with 320,000 people living there and a metro area population of 816,000, it’s a rather sizable place. But it exists in the shadow of the 8-million-population San Francisco Bay Area to the west and the 2.4-million-population Sacramento area to the north. It’s a blue-collar town — known for its surrounding San Joaquin Valley agricultural industry and its impressive inland port. But the city mainly makes the regional news for its crime problems. Despite these quality of life challenges, the Stockton area has been growing rapidly as Bay Area residents move there because of lower-priced real estate. Free Cities Center Director Steven Greenhut tackles this one, as he covered the city’s 2012 bankruptcy and owns a house there.
Spokane is an equally illustrative case study. Like Stockton, it is fairly large. It has a population of only 230,000, but a metro area of 600,000 — with a combined statistical metro population of nearly 800,000 when nearby Idaho communities such as Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls are included. Of particular interest: Spokane is fundamentally an intermountain West city that serves as the de facto capital of a vast rural and conservative region that includes northern Idaho and western Montana. Yet it is within the “blue state” of Washington, where liberal coastal cities dominate the state’s politics and urban discussions. Whereas Stockton is gritty, Spokane is pastoral. Our writer, Jeremy Lott, is based in northwest Washington and has covered the state for a variety of publications.
Finally, Hillsdale is a small city — really more of a town — with a population of 8,000 and a county population of 45,000. It’s in the Rust Belt and has experienced the economic disruptions that have long plagued that region as factories have moved to other regions and countries. But Hillsdale also is home to prominent college with a nationwide reputation, which brings its own set of opportunities and challenges. Our writer, Pacific Research Institute chairman Clark Judge, recently moved there from Washington, D.C., so he brings a fresh perspective to small-city life after spending an impressive career in in the nation’s capital as the managing director of the White House Writers Group.
This booklet’s goal is to look closely at a handful of communities that are often overshadowed by the nation’s most prominent cities in the hopes that they offer lessons for other cities in similar situations. We’re not suggesting that there’s a one-size-fits-all approach or that cities shouldn’t build on their own strengths — but there are good ideas and concepts that any city could benefit from following. Whatever the solutions, we believe that those who are interested in urban ideas can glean valuable lessons from looking closely at a variety of cities of size and type.
Steven Greenhut is director of the Pacific Research Institute’s Free Cities Center and is co-author of Urban Policy Beyond the Big Metros along with Clark Judge and Jeremy Lott.