In Gotham's Shadow: Globalization and Community Change in Central New York

Chapter 8 Extended Communities

99 Chapter 8 Extended Communities It took decades for the dynamics that untowned Hartwick to coalesce, but less than three years for the final collapse of the economy to take place. In its wake, Hartwick became dependent upon other communities to provide employment, goods, and services. When community vitality is involved, size matters. Hartwick collapsed as an independent entity because it was smaller than Cooperstown, and thereby unable to effectively compete when technological changes permitted greater contact between residents of the two villages. As Cooperstown became the dominant social and economic center in northern Otsego County during the 1970s, it did so because of the decline of its neighbors. Cooperstown had benefited from upscaling, whereas Hartwick residents faced a new reality in rural America. Historically, Hartwick residents, like those in many rural communities , perceived their village as a self-reliant economic and social system (see Vidich and Bensman 1968). In her research on central New York, Janet Fitchen (1991) commented: Rural communities are presumed by their members to have individual identities , each different from the next. Uniqueness is an article of faith, an untested assumption, in fact, an assumption that should not be questioned or tested. The ingredients of uniqueness are not always clear, yet people just “know” that their community is unique. (253) With an inability on the part of Hartwick to be autonomous, many residents shifted at least part of their community loyalties to nearby Cooperstown. By 1980, Cooperstown and Hartwick were part of an Extended Rural Community System (ERCS): a system of villages and their hinterland dependent upon one another for economic and social functionality (Thomas 1998: 17).1 100 In Gotham’s Shadow An ERCS is formed of two or more formerly autonomous communities . The system is organized around a primary center (e.g., Cooperstown)—the economic and cultural focus of the Extended Rural Community System. In such systems, the primary center is the largest village in the system, its size being the attractor for the centralization of economic functions in the village. Surrounding the primary center are a number of secondary centers (e.g., Hartwick). At times, as in the case of mobile home parks, a secondary center may be a fairly recent addition to the environment. In most cases, however, a secondary center is a formerly autonomous place that, through the processes of economic restructuring, has been subsumed as a part of the ERCS. Secondary centers are, typically, dependent upon the primary center for most economic functions, although this varies with the size of the village and its geographical location within the system (Thomas 1998). If the ERCS represents the centralization of economic and social forces, it should be understood that the pattern is unique to sparsely settled rural areas. In rural areas generally, population has become more deconcentrated, but economic and social functions have become more centralized than those typically found in urban areas, such as Utica.2 Cooperstown had in common with Utica its status as a primary economic and social center within its system of community. Utica, however, still had a greater population than the entire county of which Cooperstown was the seat, and so the ways in which restructuring affected the two communities were quite different. Similarly, the available options for community revitalization and the ability to attract and retain capital were also quite different between the two communities. So as Cooperstown, the economic and social center of central Otsego County, began to struggle with the erosion of its own economic base as a result of further upscaling, Utica struggled against the loss of its institutions to the increasingly dominant suburbs. Expected Surprises Urban renewal in Utica brought with it an expectation that the overall value of the city in terms of tax assessments would rise as it was modernized. In each project, city officials projected that the value of the property involved would rise considerably as new modern buildings replaced the slum structures of the past. With this in mind, many local officials took the news of the 1970 census to be a mixed blessing. The overall population of the metropolitan area had risen to about 340,000 residents, although the city population fell to only ninety thousand . City officials were concerned about the 10 percent drop in popu- Extended Communities 101 lation, but were comforted by the prospect of increasing valuation in the center city and continued progress to make up the shortfall. The news was...