WHO SAYS BIGGER IS BETTER?

MANY SMALL TOWNS ARE STILL FINDING WAYS TO THRIVE EVEN WITH DECLINING POPULATION NUMBERS.

WORDS JULIA JENNINGS DESIGN + ILLUSTRATION PRINCESS HART eon, Iowa, is how most small towns would be described: quaint. The courthouse is in the middle of town. There’s one main street with most of the restaurants and shops Leon has to offer. Like all small towns, it has its charms. A statue of an elephant on the corner of Main Street. Murals decorate the sides of buildings. And as for the people who live there, they wouldn’t want to call any other place home.

Not that there’s a lot of them. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Leon has a population of 1,822. Between the 2010 Census and 2020 Census, Leon’s population dropped by 155, a loss of almost 8 percent. Leon isn’t unique. Many small towns have been experiencing a decrease in population. It’s a topic that has gathered the attention of many including the President, politicians and pundits.

From 2010 to 2020, the U.S. Census reported that over 90 counties experienced a 20 percent or more change in population. More recent data shows that, for many counties, that change was a loss — a significant loss. According to the U.S. Census, in the span of one year (2020 to 2021), over 100 counties in the US lost 1.6 percent or more of their population.

RURAL AMERICA: SMALL TOWN, BIG IMPACT

In April of 2022, President Joe Biden visited Menlo, Iowa, an hour and a half away from Leon, to speak on topics affecting rural America.

“I’m here today to talk about the work we’re doing to lower costs for American families and put rural America at the center of our efforts to build a future that’s made in America,” Biden said.

There’s a reason Biden and other politicians want to do that. Rural America is the center of a bevy of important aspects of the country’s way of life, affecting even those who don’t live in rural areas. But rural America is shrinking.

Dave Peters is a sociology professor at Iowa State University. He understands the importance of rural towns in great detail. As the project coordinator for the Small Town Project, a research and extension effort that helps rural American towns thrive, Peters combines data the university collects on rural Iowa towns and distributes that information to help those towns make decisions that best benefit them.

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Peters broke down the importance of rural America into two areas: travel and everyday goods. Rural America keeps the rest of America mobile. When traveling, people need a place to stop, and those places to stop are often small towns.

“No one wants to be traveling out to Minneapolis or Colorado, where there’s nobody around if you get in an accident,” Peters said. “You don’t want to be laying on the side of the interstate because the nearest town with an ambulance is an hour away.”

The other part of the equation — everyday goods — is a little more complicated than you think. Yes, rural America is important in terms of farming, but also for things like groceries. There’s a large number of warehouses and cities, such as energy plants. But, of course, some population is needed in those areas to take care of the plants’ or warehouses’ infrastructure.

The problem: It’s difficult to get people to live there. Rural America is struggling to keep people who grew up in small towns to stay, or at least come back after college. It’s also difficult to convince those who have never lived in a small town to move there. Peters sums it up as an equity issue; people living in rural towns deserve the same opportunities locally that are available in large cities. That’s easier said than done.

PROBLEMS SMALL TOWNS FACE & POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

Peters is a big supporter of finding small, but impactful, ways rural towns can stabilize or even increase their population.

“They can make sure that their towns are accepting of newcomers and accepting of new ideas. And they can generate this concept we call social capital.”

It’s up to the towns to create social capital through quality services such as daycares, medical services, and parks. If people can find these quality services, ones they might have trouble finding or are too expensive in large cities, they may consider moving to a small town.

Kyle Sheetz, the city administrator for Leon, acknowledges that the town is lacking in some of the public services areas, which may affect people’s decision to live there or move back after college.

“In smaller towns, you have volunteer fire departments with fewer people and fewer resources. And so, response times and training is probably a little less and that sort of thing. We have kind of the same issues with policing,” Sheetz said.

This is just one of the many tradeoffs of living in a small town. Some services may be lacking, but you also know who is providing those services. Small towns are closeknit communities, after all. For some, like Sheetz, that’s part of the appeal.

“I grew up in a town about this size,” he said. “And my wife’s originally from here. We like the familiarity of folks. Your circle is essentially a majority of the town — with a smaller school system, friends for your kids, and knowing teachers. And that sort of thing is good for raising the family.”

Peters points out the importance of community and how it can help drive the success of rural towns, especially as they try new ideas to help the town thrive.

“There was a project, it didn’t work out, and everyone points fingers and blames other people,” Peters said. “That’s like the death of the town because nobody is ever gonna volunteer again. And so this kind of openness, and tolerance, to kind of accepting of different ideas, of different people, really is the key to success. I mean, that’s kind of the foundation of it all.”

THE INTERNET WILL SAVE RURAL AMERICA... OR WILL IT?

In his speech in Menlo, Biden talked about the lack of internet available to much of rural America. He mentioned that in Iowa, 16 percent of households don’t have internet subscriptions. That’s just over 200,000 households. And that’s in one of the smallest states in the country.

“The [infrastructure] law will make high-speed internet affordable and available everywhere in Iowa. And think of what that will make possible — from telemedicine to precision agriculture to small businesses that want to be able to sell in bigger markets,” Biden said.

That’s where Leon stands apart from many small towns. It has fiber optic internet services. But Sheetz isn’t sure that the strong Wi-Fi connection will fix everything like many think it will.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that we’ve seen the benefit from it,” Sheetz said. “While [the local phone company promotes] it to their customers, I don’t think it’s something that we, as a city entity, have promoted in a way that could benefit attracting business. Now, you know, maybe it’s not a big deal to some smaller businesses, but for instance, Principal Financial or Wells Fargo, which they’re probably not players in our game, but anything like that could benefit from those services that are available, but may not know it and may not think of a small town in southern Iowa as a place to do business.”

Peters shared Sheetz’s sentiment, stating, “That’s what everyone said in the mid-‘90s with the IT revolution and with high-speed dialup. It was gonna revolutionize rural areas, and it just never happened.”

Peters explained that Wi-Fi can contribute to the quality of life for residents of the town, allowing them to stream shows and for kids to do homework. But for businesses,

Wi-Fi is only a small consideration. Businesses are more concerned about finding people to work.

RURAL AMERICA ISN’T GOING ANYWHERE

The excitement in Peters’ voice as he speaks about the small Iowa towns that he has seen thrive is palpable.

“They’re very open to new ideas. They’re willing to try anything,” Peters said. “Their leadership structures are very open, meaning people can jump into a leadership position. They just really support people. They accept failure. So they’ll try things. And a lot of them fail. But you know, they kind of accept that, and that doesn’t really bother them.

“Because once you have that kind of assets or culture in your community, you’re gonna bring people in, and you’re gonna get people that are willing to just innovate and be entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs in their community, and try new things.”

Sheetz similarly recognizes the need to look for new innovative ways to improve Leon.

“I think we need to be a little bit visionary and focus on our long game and take small steps so that we can look back in a number of years and say, ‘Yeah, we really did make progress’ rather than trying to take big swings. And when we swing and miss then it feels we get a really negative vibe from that sort of thing. And I’m not saying that that’s necessarily happened in the past. But we need to be open to ideas, think outside the box, and not necessarily look for a quick fix. I think it’s a slow walk to China.”

But this is a walk the small town is willing to take.