Small cities are "living laboratories" for ideas on how to generate dynamic economic opportunity across a broader geography. Small cities can provide a patchwork of economic hubs with a diverse industry base, entrepreneurship, quality jobs, and quality of life for people outside major metropolitan areas where growth and opportunity are increasingly concentrated.
The success of large metropolitan areas in the south is well-documented, as places like the Research Triangle, Atlanta, Charlotte, Charleston, and Nashville are fast-growing and attractive places to live and do business.
In focusing on small cities, we see a diversity and creativity of approaches to grow local and regional economies in a resilient and dynamic way.
Economic resilience refers to how an economy can respond to economic shocks due to disruption of industries, economic downturns, and disasters. Resilient economies adapt to shifts and downturns and reorient the local industry base as change occurs.
Inherent in economic resilience is economic dynamism: the degree to which new businesses, ideas, and people are entering an economy and driving reinvention and innovation. In examining resilient small cities in the south, RTI considered the following factors around growth, technology, manufacturing, entrepreneurship, and education.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to economic resilience and dynamism in small cities. They have unique and distinct profiles, and as our work shows, are found in areas of different size and geographies - we look at university-anchored, coastal, military-connected, and metro-connected cities and how they use their local assets to generate resilient growth.
The RTI team explored seven locations across the Southeast to better understand how small cities are investing in themselves and using their unique assets to chart a new trajectory forward for economic dynamism “and” resilience.
Each city has followed a different path, demonstrating that there is no single way to build resilient economies. The following themes underscore some key tactics, investments, and approaches that resulted in positive local change over the last 20 years.
Different types of places provide fresh ideas on ways small cities can drive toward economic resilience.
The University-anchored cities of Boone and Oxford have prioritized entrepreneurship and small business development to diversify their economies to support resilient growth. These cities benefit from more than just a university presence: local university leadership is actively embracing this growth strategy alongside public investment in infrastructure and public amenities that supporting business growth and attractive quality of life.
Photo Credit: Mountain BizWorks
The coastal cities of Savannah and Wilmington are examples of how small cities are pursuing economic diversification. Savannah has benefitted from historic strengths as a deep-water port and has built an active logistics, supply chain, and manufacturing industry around it. Wilmington is undergoing a rapid transformation by diversifying its industry base in manufacturing, fintech, and pharmaceuticals with a successful startup ecosystem.
Tullahoma-Manchester is a region with small cities that have created resiliency and dynamism by connecting to military, educational, and industry assets to expand advanced manufacturing companies and new firms. Its economic diversification from traditional distilling to aerospace, automotive, and machinery manufacturing is the result of deliberate efforts to support technology-based development and connections to military and industrial assets in the region.
Gainesville and Jefferson are taking advantage of their geographic location outside of Atlanta by leveraging the airport , interstate infrastructure, and growing population to foster business and industry growth. Pairing these attributes with savvy and coordinated state and local economic development decisions have led to automotive manufacturing supply chain development which creates spillover growth for other industries.
For analysis, the data are presented at the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), Micropolitan Statistical Area, and county level as defined by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). For more information, see the U.S. Census Bureau.
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