How Small Communities Win

We love to define our communities—and the reasons someone should be a part of them—by their extractive qualities:

Live! (Look at the nice, affordable houses you can buy!)
Work! (You can make money to buy things!)
Play! (Here are all the food and drinks and stuff you can buy!)

But in this definition, communities being places for people and become simply places for commerce. This is especially harmful in the case of the small community that, in the absence of knowing better things to say about itself, proclaims, “We have SO many great places to live! We have SO many great places to work! We have SO many great places to play!”

If a small community believes that its value proposition lies in having “so many” of anything, all it takes is for a young person to step out of their car in any nearby or far away metropolitan city to know that they’ve been lied to their entire—and that they’re never coming back.

When a small community defines itself with *things*, it ignores the unimpeachable truth that there will always be another community with more of those things and likely does them better.

It’s a resource race that every small community will lose. But we do it anyway, either ignoring the truth ourselves or hoping that we’ll snag a person or two who doesn’t know any better.

So, how does a small community win?

First, let’s acknowledge the bit of truth in “Live! Work! Play!”. A community *needs* quality—and preferably, a variety—of available housing. A community needs quality—and preferably, a variety—of jobs in which people can make a living with some left over. A community needs quality—and preferably—a variety of ways for citizens to have a bit of fun. Meeting the functional and material needs of people is the “basic math” of community building. If people don’t have shelter, they can’t live there; if they can’t find meaningful work, they will either not work or go where they can; if people are bored, they will spend their time and energy and money someplace else.

But stopping here is like a car dealer saying you should buy from them because their cars have four wheels, the engines work, and you can get them in a few different colors. The car salesman *might* happen upon people for whom that’s enough to make a sale, but most will move on to look for someone who can offer them a little bit more, or at the very least, try a little bit harder.

If a small community can’t offer housing, jobs, or entertainment in convincing enough qualities and quantities, it’s got some work to do. But that’s not to say it can’t still put itself out there. Depending on the amount of work to be done, one can go out on dates and wear a nice shirt while still going to therapy. The only outcome of waiting until you’re perfect to make a move is being alone.

But for the sake of moving on, let’s say that the small community is confident enough of itself to say, “What are you doing Friday at 8?”

The next step—and one many small communities don’t ever get to—is to think about what they offer *that no one else can*. The nice shirt and the car with four wheels won’t be impressive beyond the first date, and certainly isn’t enough to convince someone to take it to the next level of commitment. So, beyond the veneer of “stuff”, a potential suitor needs to communicate that they can meet the fundamental requirements of a relationship: trust, love, care, and safety.

Psychologist Alfred Adler says that the two fundamental needs every human has are to 1) feel important and 2) to feel like they belong.

If, sitting in front of that first date, you pull out your phone to continue swiping right on Tinder, they’ll leave. If a majority of the conversation centers around who you are and what kinds of things you can buy, they'll find someone else.

What a small community needs to do—and indeed, where its tactical advantage lies—is to communicate that it can meet the fundamental needs of importance and belonging. In a resource race, the volume of stuff and people in a metropolitan city acts as an advantage. But in the pursuit of meeting the fundamental needs of importance and belonging, that same volume becomes an obstacle that can prevent it from doing so.

A small community, however, unencumbered by the need to be anywhere else or having too many places to see, people to know, or things to do, can grab the hands of the person sitting across the table, look deeply into their eyes and say, “You are important to us. You belong here.”

Recently, Dr. Katherine Loflin spoke on what it takes for a community to convince someone to live there: “People need to see themselves in you.”

The young person needs to see that they can have a place to live AND a close circle of friends while pursuing not only meaningful work, but work that can make a difference. The family needs to see they can be financially supported AND experience a high quality of life with safety and depth while nurturing their future. The high achieving person can create a legacy, the lonely person can feel connected, the later-in-life person can contribute and give back. The activist can act, the creative can create, the doer can do.

If someone is looking for a place to buy things, they can be a tourist for a weekend or hop on Amazon.

But fulfilling the human needs of importance and belonging requires a community, and is a task a small community is specifically well-suited to meet.