Small Cities USA: Growth, Diversity, and Inequality

2 The Divergent Fates of Small Cities

27 As one drives down University Avenue in Green Bay, Wisconsin, one sees history written into the very fabric of the city. The old Fort Howard paper company building changed names several times as the company went from public to private and from being locally owned to being part of an industrial giant, Georgia Pacific Corporation. Although not nearly as much paper pulping employ locals today as in 1970, there are still many highpaying mill jobs in paper production that provide a comfortable standard of living for residents with only a high school degree. Heading out along University Avenue toward the local state school— the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay (UWGB) campus—one passes several local grocery stores. These stores used to cater to Polish, Dutch, and Scandinavian neighbors, but in the 1980s they became Asian markets selling lemon grass and durian fruit to the local Hmong community. More recently, the stores have changed again. Now they are bodegas stocking masa and tomatillos, serving the recent influx of Central and South American immigrants. These Latino men and women moved to the area eager for good jobs in meatpacking companies such as Packerland Packing. The meatpacking industry predates the national football team and is the origin of the name of the Green Bay Packers. The old Italian Mona Lisa Ristorante is now a tavern after a brief life as a Mexican bar, and the Piggly Wiggly has been replaced by a Walgreens. As one heads further out of town, past the lesbian bar that closed after a fire in the early 1990s, past the empty furniture store in one of the 2 The Divergent Fates of Small Cities 28 CHAPTER 2 many mini-malls that sprang up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, past Rivera Lanes (one of the few bowling alleys left from the days, as recently as the 1980s, when Green Bay had more bowling lanes per capita than any other city in the United States), new apartment complexes have appeared on what used to be open fields. The UWGB campus sits where University Avenue becomes Nicolet Drive (named in honor of the French explorer who first came to the area). The university has changed its look and focus considerably since it opened in 1969. Originally intended to be a magnet school for environmental studies, it has become a medium-sized general four-year college for students studying the liberal arts and sciences. While this drive down one street in one of the eighty cities included in this study might seem prosaic, it illustrates many of the changes that have occurred in these cities over time. The buying and selling of the Fort Howard paper company illustrates how local economies have become ever more integrated into the national economy over time, and how this process affects places of all sizes. Similarly, the change from a locally owned Piggly Wiggly to a Walgreens exemplifies the increasing influence of national chain stores on local social, economic, and physical landscapes. The shifts in local stores to reflect newcomers to the community from various points of origin shows how even small cities are now home to diverse communities. Even the transformation of the local university presents the opportunity to understand largescale changes: from a 1970s idealism concerning the environment to a 1990s emphasis on educational institutions as sources of “good jobs.” Green Bay is not unique in presenting in microcosm the many changes that have affected urban areas in the United States since 1970. Providence, Laredo, and Salinas and the other seventy-six places in this book also have stories to tell. One way to understand the divergent fates of these small cities is to examine some common questions about how small cities have fared over the last several decades. 1. Smaller cities are dying, aren’t they? Researchers, journalists and concerned citizens are all alarmed at the disappearance of smaller places in the United States. But are all small places dying? Yes and no. Some small cities are losing people but many are not, and previous explanations for why different patterns exist prove insufficient. While change in population is not the only measure of how a place is faring, it is an important one in many respects. THE DIVERGENT FATES OF SMALL CITIES 29 2. People matter, but how? Richard Florida and other scholars argue that places that are able to attract certain...