As technology and economies have evolved, it has become a sad reality across many developed countries that regions that had previously enjoyed prosperity failed to adapt when their dominant industries no longer had the luster of old.

A new research project from Iowa State University attempts to explore whether shrinking small towns are able to maintain a high quality of life as they recede.  The project builds upon previous work from 2017 that examined whether here were any towns in Iowa that had reduced in population but still maintained their quality of life.  This original assessment found that factors such as social infrastructure played a big role in the quality of life in such towns.

Learning lessons

The researchers wanted to ensure that any lessons from towns that managed to shrink in a healthy way was shared with other towns of a similar fate.  The researchers have worked with the Iowa League of Cities to develop a “curriculum” that can be shared between towns.

The team also want to establish a group of mentor communities from the Iowa Small Towns Project to work with mentee towns to implement the findings included in the smart shrinkage curriculum, with the results then measured to test efficacy across a range of towns.

“We had been looking for ways to share what we knew with a broader base of communities,” the researchers explain. “We don’t want to just push the curriculum out and walk away.”

This will help to inform the creation of what the team are calling a Community Information Ecosystem (CIE), which will provide towns with a set of digital tools to enable data to be collected more often and in more depth about their perceived quality of life in their town.

“After collecting all available data about small towns and putting them into the CIE, we will analyze these data, identify the data gap for understanding small towns’ quality of life, and develop innovative data collection methods to collect additional data from the residents,” the researchers say. “Finally, we will develop tools to integrate all the data and present them to the community in an accessible way.”

This will be key as there is a data deficiency at the moment due to the lack of any real mechanism for towns to garner insights from residents about the quality of life they enjoy.  The team also hope that the system will improve the sense of belonging within each community and allow greater integration between different groups.

Quality of life

The importance of civic engagement and social connectedness are key, the team say, as these small towns might be a microcosm of trends seen across the country.

The team plan to continue refining their approach so that they can be further tested in the next Iowa Small Towns Project, which will be conducted in 2024.  They will also be assessing the impact of COVID-19 on small towns throughout 2020.

With the Community Information Ecosystem providing a hub of data for each town, the researchers hope that it will better inform decisions across small towns.

“It can be hard to see your own community objectively, so having access to concrete data may help rural communities make informed decisions about issues important to the community’s future,” the researchers conclude.