Ambitious, smart people move to urban areas because that's where the work and the $ are. That's been going on forever. Sclerosis/NIMBYism is the major obstacle for the entire USA. And Aspen, CO has a 3 story limit I believe, for whatever that is worth!
Also one of the developer of Aspen was a guy from DeWitt Illinois, who was in the mountain corp in WW2. Sharp guy, was in my Uncle's class in High School Got out too early, though he did make a pile of money.
Forgot the guy's name from DeWitt. Was watching Illini game at Jakes Sports Bar in Clinton with my next door neighbor, who was a few years behind him in school. He introduced us. The guy from DeWitt never hit it big, but that is relative to Aspen standards. He did very well for himself.
Neighbor's brother was Undersecretary of Agriculture and CEO of Riceland Industries. Also James Brady's room mate at U of I. Neighbor was a cattle farmer and super Illini fan.
Jeff - are you familiar with Charles Marohn who founded strongtowns.org?
Marohn makes compelling arguments for revitalizing towns and suburbs and cities through better regulatory/zoning in order to create centers of thriving commercial transactions. He rails against parking requirements, rent seeking minimum size units, tif, etc (all the tools of central economic development "experts").
I ran across Marohn and strong towns after reading Jane Jacobs several years ago.
Marohn is a Minnesota native - and current resident.
Glad someone else here brought up Strong Towns and Marohn. I've had really good luck using his stuff for policy discussions in my town. Strong Town appeals to a lot of people in a very non-partisan way that is conducive to local politics.
Jeff, the problem I see is you moved from one crooked Cook county to another. But really the people that run these small towns don't want to see any new growth they want to keep it like Mayberry, they figure the locals will keep paying their ever increasing property taxes that keep going up just like the fools in Cook County IL. By the way how is your mother? Hope all is well with her.
I’ve been on both sides of this debate and seen it play out in places I’ve lived and the lives of people there. I grew up in a small town in northern WI. My uncle was a real estate investor and developer that made a lot of money investing in real estate within the community he grew up in and loved only to be mostly hated for it, until he stopped investing locally and started investing outside of the community. People live in places like Grand Marais because they like it the way it is and don’t want people moving in and changing things. They don’t agree that it’s “grow or die”. Now I live in Post Falls, ID next to Coeur d’Alene and there is massive population increase that is very much not wanted by locals. There are “slow growth” and “anti-growth” groups that debate on local
social media and show up to city meetings. I work with real estate brokers that are pissed at local municipalities for not allowing more business. There’s been an increase in crime as well. People are moving businesses here from California only because the communist purges are forcing them out. It sucks that the communists in St. Paul have mandated that local communities pay for services they can’t provide. I’m sure that’ll work out REAL WELL for everyone🙄. Commies kill everything good that they touch. I’m guessing if I lived in Grand Marais, I probably wouldn’t want anything to change either.
It's the ag econ - you either grow or die (I grew up w/40 acre dairy farms and now you need a minimum of 360 to support the number of dairy cows needed so you can purchase a new truck every now/then).
That's interesting about 40 acres becoming 360. I spoke with a winemaker once that said once you hit a certain number of cases produced per year, because of the costs you either stay under that number or you make as much as you can. Dairy business is a tough business.
I am from Wapella, Illinois population 550. We were crushed in the Farm crisis in 1980 or so. Was probably better than just stumbling along making a small amount of money, as people diversified, though it was literally fatal to many farmers, including relatives of mine.
The farm crisis developed a broader spectrum of people with excellent work ethic and mechanical ability. Many good businesses have developed, albeit not in ag production. Industrial Plumbing and HVAC is a big thing. Starting salaries around $80K, while housing prices are a nice brick ranch with a couple acres goes for $100k.
I think it works to have a high skilled workforce, willing to travel. Was just talking to a Wapella relative about this...it is the *no pride* people who have been successful. Willing to drive to so far away, not very glamorous place and replace an industrial septic tank on a 3rd shift in the middle of winter. Gets you $200/hour.
Love seeing trucks from my hometown or close to it working on Ryan Field construction on some unique construction specialty, soaking up Northwestern's money, while delivering a better product/service than they can get in Cook County. It's not like Northwestern is going to move to Wapella. So Wapella has to move here.
It takes three years to get a septic dug in my small town....only one or two contractors to do the work. One well driller. Industrial plumbing is a big deal
Seeing the same thing in my small town. My stepmother was mayor for a while, and advocated for growth ... and was immediately voted out by the oldsters the next election.
We are dying. The only businesses on Main Street are a few restaurants (overpriced) and several non-profit church-owned resale shops. Oh, and one (really nice) guitar shop owned by the same man that owns many of the other buildings. He's about the only pro-growth person in the area, and even he can't override the town grumps.
The USA, similar tp what China has had for the last 40 years, used to run a paradigm of deep national economic integration while SIMULTENOUSY maintaining partial market fragmentations. One of the biggest of them all was its partial capital market fragmentations that existed for every single day of the USA's existence until the were mostly gotten rid of between the latter 1970s and mid 1980s as part of the so called Neoliberal Era's ascension. When these were done away with, what all of those structures proponents had, for hundreds of years, warned would happen if they were taken away, happened. The city governments are straightjacketed in a few key ways that prevent the local communities from expressing themselves intellectually and creatively in public policy because their fiscal space is very limited because the national government takes so much revenue, they cannot interfere with "markets" (and lol what a lie there, the Neoliberal Era set up centralized anti market cartelization, not "free markets"), they pretty much cant inhibit or direct capital flows, and they have near zero room for variability in one of their most key assets: their public education systems. The USA's Old Republic enabled them to do these things for hundreds of years and they often had amazing results...
There's a podcast called "Short Circuit" by the guys & gals at IJ, Institute for Justice. They've been doing a lot of episodes on zoning in the last year or so.
One of the many problems in Minnesota is the one industry town. I have lived and worked all across the state, from the Iowa to Canadian border and I lived in Duluth for 10 years, now in East Grand Forks. The one industry towns have zero vision. Now not all the diversified towns have vision but many do. By one industry I mean the taconite towns such as Virginia, mill towns like Intl Falls, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Those towns just sit back and wait for something to happen. Towns that have had to scratch have vision. They make things happen. You can feel the difference when you spend time there. But, the state is always trying to stop progress in those towns with vision. I remember years ago when Marvin Windows got fined for some minor environmental thing. They said no more jobs for Minnesota. And North Dakota got the jobs. This kind of thing is emblematic of Minnesota.
Amen, Jeff. You're preaching to the choir with me. I'm on our town's Long Range Planning Committee and, when we were working on our 10 year plan last year, it was the same people who came to our meetings, day after day, to basically argue for keeping everything in town the same going forward. They wanted restrictions on new housing, height restrictions, building 'look' and 'feel' rules, etc... Interestingly, the politics of this get muddled and that group complaining had a healthy dose of local conservatives and liberals.
But you're totally right that a community staying the same is a dying community.
The prohibitions are needed. Too many small homes and no way to handle the wastewater, ruins the surrounding farms and their wells. People need to learn to live together, in town, connected to water and sewer systems.
We had one house per 160 acres for generations. Worked fine, with families of 8 or 9 kids. You have to dig a septic tank. No big deal. It is a mature and well defined process.
Might consider how to manage this, given the demographics and current family sizes.
God help us if we ever think that Robert Taylor homes is somehow a better place to live than on a farm.
>>Rethinking what I wrote...the people who lived at Robert Taylor would probably have been just fine if they lived on a hog farm in Central Illinois. It is the people who think they know better than the residents who are the problem.
The carrying capacity of the land determines. We use technology to affect the negative side-effects. My farm is on line between urban and agriculture - better septic systems allow for 5-acre lots, county only allows so many driveways (or you interfere w/needed truck traffic).
Ambitious, smart people move to urban areas because that's where the work and the $ are. That's been going on forever. Sclerosis/NIMBYism is the major obstacle for the entire USA. And Aspen, CO has a 3 story limit I believe, for whatever that is worth!
That is true. Aspen has mountains, and skiing.....a thing you can't get everywhere.
Also one of the developer of Aspen was a guy from DeWitt Illinois, who was in the mountain corp in WW2. Sharp guy, was in my Uncle's class in High School Got out too early, though he did make a pile of money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Paepcke Walter Paepcke, Latin School grad and founder of Container Corp of America!
Forgot the guy's name from DeWitt. Was watching Illini game at Jakes Sports Bar in Clinton with my next door neighbor, who was a few years behind him in school. He introduced us. The guy from DeWitt never hit it big, but that is relative to Aspen standards. He did very well for himself.
Neighbor's brother was Undersecretary of Agriculture and CEO of Riceland Industries. Also James Brady's room mate at U of I. Neighbor was a cattle farmer and super Illini fan.
Jeff - are you familiar with Charles Marohn who founded strongtowns.org?
Marohn makes compelling arguments for revitalizing towns and suburbs and cities through better regulatory/zoning in order to create centers of thriving commercial transactions. He rails against parking requirements, rent seeking minimum size units, tif, etc (all the tools of central economic development "experts").
I ran across Marohn and strong towns after reading Jane Jacobs several years ago.
Marohn is a Minnesota native - and current resident.
I am not familiar. Interesting. TIFs are horrible things that are only used to entrench power. Witnessed how they work in Chicago.
Glad someone else here brought up Strong Towns and Marohn. I've had really good luck using his stuff for policy discussions in my town. Strong Town appeals to a lot of people in a very non-partisan way that is conducive to local politics.
Jeff, the problem I see is you moved from one crooked Cook county to another. But really the people that run these small towns don't want to see any new growth they want to keep it like Mayberry, they figure the locals will keep paying their ever increasing property taxes that keep going up just like the fools in Cook County IL. By the way how is your mother? Hope all is well with her.
Yes, it always makes me laugh about the Cook Counties. Thanks for asking about my mom. She passed away on August 21. She was 85. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/legacyremembers/judie-carter-obituary?id=56085759
Jeff, sorry for your loss. I will say a prayer for her and your family.
I’ve been on both sides of this debate and seen it play out in places I’ve lived and the lives of people there. I grew up in a small town in northern WI. My uncle was a real estate investor and developer that made a lot of money investing in real estate within the community he grew up in and loved only to be mostly hated for it, until he stopped investing locally and started investing outside of the community. People live in places like Grand Marais because they like it the way it is and don’t want people moving in and changing things. They don’t agree that it’s “grow or die”. Now I live in Post Falls, ID next to Coeur d’Alene and there is massive population increase that is very much not wanted by locals. There are “slow growth” and “anti-growth” groups that debate on local
social media and show up to city meetings. I work with real estate brokers that are pissed at local municipalities for not allowing more business. There’s been an increase in crime as well. People are moving businesses here from California only because the communist purges are forcing them out. It sucks that the communists in St. Paul have mandated that local communities pay for services they can’t provide. I’m sure that’ll work out REAL WELL for everyone🙄. Commies kill everything good that they touch. I’m guessing if I lived in Grand Marais, I probably wouldn’t want anything to change either.
It's the ag econ - you either grow or die (I grew up w/40 acre dairy farms and now you need a minimum of 360 to support the number of dairy cows needed so you can purchase a new truck every now/then).
That's interesting about 40 acres becoming 360. I spoke with a winemaker once that said once you hit a certain number of cases produced per year, because of the costs you either stay under that number or you make as much as you can. Dairy business is a tough business.
I am from Wapella, Illinois population 550. We were crushed in the Farm crisis in 1980 or so. Was probably better than just stumbling along making a small amount of money, as people diversified, though it was literally fatal to many farmers, including relatives of mine.
The farm crisis developed a broader spectrum of people with excellent work ethic and mechanical ability. Many good businesses have developed, albeit not in ag production. Industrial Plumbing and HVAC is a big thing. Starting salaries around $80K, while housing prices are a nice brick ranch with a couple acres goes for $100k.
I think it works to have a high skilled workforce, willing to travel. Was just talking to a Wapella relative about this...it is the *no pride* people who have been successful. Willing to drive to so far away, not very glamorous place and replace an industrial septic tank on a 3rd shift in the middle of winter. Gets you $200/hour.
Love seeing trucks from my hometown or close to it working on Ryan Field construction on some unique construction specialty, soaking up Northwestern's money, while delivering a better product/service than they can get in Cook County. It's not like Northwestern is going to move to Wapella. So Wapella has to move here.
It takes three years to get a septic dug in my small town....only one or two contractors to do the work. One well driller. Industrial plumbing is a big deal
It is a good business. That is why these guys travel. I would guess nearly 100 people from Wapella are in that trade/profession.
Seeing the same thing in my small town. My stepmother was mayor for a while, and advocated for growth ... and was immediately voted out by the oldsters the next election.
We are dying. The only businesses on Main Street are a few restaurants (overpriced) and several non-profit church-owned resale shops. Oh, and one (really nice) guitar shop owned by the same man that owns many of the other buildings. He's about the only pro-growth person in the area, and even he can't override the town grumps.
If you want to know why smaller municipalities have failed, read the book, 'Internal Combustion'.
The USA, similar tp what China has had for the last 40 years, used to run a paradigm of deep national economic integration while SIMULTENOUSY maintaining partial market fragmentations. One of the biggest of them all was its partial capital market fragmentations that existed for every single day of the USA's existence until the were mostly gotten rid of between the latter 1970s and mid 1980s as part of the so called Neoliberal Era's ascension. When these were done away with, what all of those structures proponents had, for hundreds of years, warned would happen if they were taken away, happened. The city governments are straightjacketed in a few key ways that prevent the local communities from expressing themselves intellectually and creatively in public policy because their fiscal space is very limited because the national government takes so much revenue, they cannot interfere with "markets" (and lol what a lie there, the Neoliberal Era set up centralized anti market cartelization, not "free markets"), they pretty much cant inhibit or direct capital flows, and they have near zero room for variability in one of their most key assets: their public education systems. The USA's Old Republic enabled them to do these things for hundreds of years and they often had amazing results...
There's a podcast called "Short Circuit" by the guys & gals at IJ, Institute for Justice. They've been doing a lot of episodes on zoning in the last year or so.
https://ij.org/podcasts/short-circuit/short-circuit-335-zoning-justice/
One of the many problems in Minnesota is the one industry town. I have lived and worked all across the state, from the Iowa to Canadian border and I lived in Duluth for 10 years, now in East Grand Forks. The one industry towns have zero vision. Now not all the diversified towns have vision but many do. By one industry I mean the taconite towns such as Virginia, mill towns like Intl Falls, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Those towns just sit back and wait for something to happen. Towns that have had to scratch have vision. They make things happen. You can feel the difference when you spend time there. But, the state is always trying to stop progress in those towns with vision. I remember years ago when Marvin Windows got fined for some minor environmental thing. They said no more jobs for Minnesota. And North Dakota got the jobs. This kind of thing is emblematic of Minnesota.
True dat.
Amen, Jeff. You're preaching to the choir with me. I'm on our town's Long Range Planning Committee and, when we were working on our 10 year plan last year, it was the same people who came to our meetings, day after day, to basically argue for keeping everything in town the same going forward. They wanted restrictions on new housing, height restrictions, building 'look' and 'feel' rules, etc... Interestingly, the politics of this get muddled and that group complaining had a healthy dose of local conservatives and liberals.
But you're totally right that a community staying the same is a dying community.
The prohibitions are needed. Too many small homes and no way to handle the wastewater, ruins the surrounding farms and their wells. People need to learn to live together, in town, connected to water and sewer systems.
Agree, infrastructure has to be put in place to support the growth.
We had one house per 160 acres for generations. Worked fine, with families of 8 or 9 kids. You have to dig a septic tank. No big deal. It is a mature and well defined process.
Might consider how to manage this, given the demographics and current family sizes.
God help us if we ever think that Robert Taylor homes is somehow a better place to live than on a farm.
>>Rethinking what I wrote...the people who lived at Robert Taylor would probably have been just fine if they lived on a hog farm in Central Illinois. It is the people who think they know better than the residents who are the problem.
The carrying capacity of the land determines. We use technology to affect the negative side-effects. My farm is on line between urban and agriculture - better septic systems allow for 5-acre lots, county only allows so many driveways (or you interfere w/needed truck traffic).