Having the right stuff

There are several notable examples of rural South Carolina communities that appear to have “the right stuff,” the vision and the resolve to make the changes necessary for positive growth.

Westminster, the Upstate town of 2,902 in Oconee County, is a prime example of such a community, Harris said.

“It’s my feeling that most good things are the result of successfully dealing with a crisis,” he said. “No one seems to notice a slow deterioration, but Americans respond well to crises. Westminster’s crisis came when Winn-Dixie shut down the only local food store. It forced them to redefine themselves. They decided to promote tourism and now present their growing community as ‘The Gateway to the River,’ the Chattooga, which has become a whitewater destination.”

Great Falls in Chester County (population 2,095) is another example, Harris said.

“Their crisis came back in the early 1980s when J.P. Stevens shut down its textile mills in Great Falls and Jonesville, laying off 425 workers. It forced the community to rethink its place in the economy. They’ve come back; not all the way, but they’re on the road.

“Union (in Chester County) is another prime example of a community doing some good stuff,” Harris said. “They’re revitalizing their downtown and the older homes. We used Union as a case study for an undergraduate tourism class here at Clemson. Students attended a festival in the town, interviewed residents and tourists and later helped the city develop a strategic plan.”

Entering exurbia

A report on the emerging financial and economic needs of agriculture and rural America was issued recently as part of a forward-looking research and assessment initiative undertaken by the U.S. Farm Credit System.
According to that report, the percentage of U.S. workers employed in agriculture has decreased from 41% in 1900 to 16% in 1945 and to 2% in 2002.

Harris noted that as agriculture declined, manufacturing took off and “South Carolina was doing reasonably well (until) the recession sent a lot of jobs overseas. The textile industry, at one time the state’s most visible, is now all but gone. We have come to a point where we have to ask, ‘What does South Carolina have to offer that no one else has?’

“It used to be a labor force, but there are obviously good workers elsewhere in the world. South Carolina has changed from a labor-intensive economy to one that’s capital-intensive. Our rural labor force is miniscule, but the dollar value of what they produce is high. And the products don’t necessarily weigh a lot. In many cases, those products are intellectual properties. Access to broadband in many cases is as important as land and buildings.”

Other challenges for rural development, according to Harris, revolve around the environmental and social impact resulting from an influx of new people to the state and to areas such as Jasper and Beaufort counties, along with the expansion of “exurbs” across the state.

As part of its Living Cities Census Series, the Brookings Institution issued an October 2006 report titled “Finding Exurbia: America’s Fast-Growing Communities at the Metropolitan Fringe.” Exurbia first gained popularity when A.C. Spectorsky described its residents in his 1955 book, “The Exurbanites.”

The report, compiled by Alan Berube, Audrey Singer, Jill H. Wilson and William H. Frey, noted that the exurbs—not yet full-fledged suburbs, but no longer wholly rural areas—are undergoing rapid changes in population, land use and economic function.

According to the report, as of 2000, approximately 10.8 million people lived in the exurbs of large metropolitan areas. This represents roughly 6% of the population of these areas. The typical exurban census tract has 14 acres of land per home, compared to 0.8 acres per home in the typical tract nationwide.

Some academics argue that exurbs, which are disproportionately populated by white, middle-income homeowners and commuters, represent a path-breaking form of development, defined in part by the extreme distances from these areas to the metropolitan core.

The real story is the test faced by states in determining how exurbia will grow.

Will the exurbs remain exurbs or become the suburbs of tomorrow. In many areas, battles over roads, land, sewers, schools, quality of life and the loss of small-town character are already reaching a fever pitch.