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Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America's Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World
America's once-vibrant small-to-midsize cities -- Syracuse, Worcester, Akron, Flint,Rockford, and others -- increasingly resemble urban wastelands. Gutted by deindustrialization,outsourcing, and middle-class flight, disproportionately devastated by metro freeway systems thatlaid waste to the urban fabric and displaced the working poor, small industrial cities seem to bepart of America's past, not its future. And yet, Catherine Tumber argues in this provocative book,America's gritty Rust Belt cities could play a central role in a greener, low-carbon, relocalizedfuture. As we wean ourselves from fossil fuels and realize the environmental costsof suburban sprawl, we will see that small cities offer many assets for sustainable living notshared by their big city or small town counterparts, including population density and nearby,fertile farmland available for new environmentally friendly uses. Tumber traveledto twenty-five cities in the Northeast and Midwest -- from Buffalo to Peoria to Detroit to Rochester-- interviewing planners, city officials, and activists, and weaving their stories into thisexploration of small-scale urbanism. Smaller cities can be a critical part of a sustainable futureand a productive green economy. Small, Gritty, and Green will help us develop themoral and political imagination we need to realize this.
211 pages, Hardcover
First published November 4, 2011
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March 22, 2015Small, Gritty and Green - Catherine Tumber
This was a good follow-on for me from This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein. It examines practical approaches and policy for changing smaller cities (populations of 50 to 200 thousand) to reduce heat trapping gas pollution. The focus around this large topic is primarily on cities in the northeast and midwest of the U.S.
From the introduction (page xvi):
... this is a hopeful book. I argue that smaller industrial cities, long ignored and even maligned by urban theorists, could have a bright future if they prepare now for a low-carbon world -- a world in which they could play a central role. My claim is based on two related convictions. First, we must end our dependence on fossil fuels. Second, our long-term environmental well-being depends on dramatically altering modern land use patterns -- in agriculture, in transportation, in housing, and in workplaces and retail establishments -- by concentrating population in cities and inhibiting sprawl.
Tumber made a very personal quest to meet those involved and experience first-hand the changes and reactions there on the ground. That makes this book which examines topics of urbanism and public policy very friendly and real. It's a large topic far beyond a book this approachable, and yet Tumber makes a very complete and inviting introduction to this less examined area of green urbanism.
This book also examines economic and political challenges being faced by these same cities beyond the green issues as well. Some of the cities specifically examined are Flint Michigan, Youngstown Ohio, Syracuse and Rochester New York, Janesville Wisconsin, Muncie Indiana, and many other cities across these states.
A good read for those wishing to be informed about topics like these. Excellent bibliography too.
This was a good follow-on for me from This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein. It examines practical approaches and policy for changing smaller cities (populations of 50 to 200 thousand) to reduce heat trapping gas pollution. The focus around this large topic is primarily on cities in the northeast and midwest of the U.S.
From the introduction (page xvi):
... this is a hopeful book. I argue that smaller industrial cities, long ignored and even maligned by urban theorists, could have a bright future if they prepare now for a low-carbon world -- a world in which they could play a central role. My claim is based on two related convictions. First, we must end our dependence on fossil fuels. Second, our long-term environmental well-being depends on dramatically altering modern land use patterns -- in agriculture, in transportation, in housing, and in workplaces and retail establishments -- by concentrating population in cities and inhibiting sprawl.
Tumber made a very personal quest to meet those involved and experience first-hand the changes and reactions there on the ground. That makes this book which examines topics of urbanism and public policy very friendly and real. It's a large topic far beyond a book this approachable, and yet Tumber makes a very complete and inviting introduction to this less examined area of green urbanism.
This book also examines economic and political challenges being faced by these same cities beyond the green issues as well. Some of the cities specifically examined are Flint Michigan, Youngstown Ohio, Syracuse and Rochester New York, Janesville Wisconsin, Muncie Indiana, and many other cities across these states.
A good read for those wishing to be informed about topics like these. Excellent bibliography too.
September 29, 2013
The writing style of Catherine Tumbler is bland and colorless, and it ultimately prevented me from finishing this book. The author taxes the reader with too many references to influential urban thinkers like Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford and the likes, and she also mentions so many books on urban planning that one cannot help but feel that she has simply read a lot on the subject and that she doesn't have any ideas of her own. Also, the author's premises are sometimes too far-reaching and require clarification; it would have been nice for her to elaborate on them a little more instead of using blanket statements and sweeping generalizations. In a nutshell, I think that the book's subject is a fascinating one, but the author has given it a bad treatment, and for that reason I do not recommend it.
January 6, 2016
Opened me up to a bunch of ways small rust belt cities, like the one I live in (Worcester), can rebuild in a low carbon, sustainable economy. It also does a good job explaining how these cities came to be such hollow shells.
April 19, 2020
It's never as easy to provide a compellingly argued and convincingly detailed policy survey as it is to give biographical or narrative anecdotes the sheen of statistical respectability. To her credit, Tumber chooses the former approach. She reviews the composition and knowledge systems surrounding "small industrial cities" in America, focusing especially on local businesses, food systems, and energy systems. It's a topic close to my heart and I felt that, pitfalls of her policy-first approach aside, Tumber does it justice more often than not. This doens't make the book easy to read however, despite its relative brevity - as the months-long gap in my own reading history should indicate.
November 3, 2017
I thought it an interesting read. Her style took a little time to get used to. More like a series of long articles for a magazine. I live in a mid size City with a buy local campaign, still wooing big companies and manufacturing, with a donut population shape and work in Nutrition, including on a food policy committee, so this was right up my alley and close to home. The lack of imagination in such cities-leaders and citizens- is the biggest challenge. The whole city wants to be a cool kid and be like the best cities, with every chain restaurant and an ever growing population.
November 12, 2022
Tumber is an excellent writer, and her chapters on more developed work are superb. Unfortunately she dwells longer on hopeful, speculative city planning which makes the book less relevant as it goes along. She also doesn't take a very deep dive into ownership structures which are increasingly relevant. A feature of today's Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland--just started out at the time of this writing, not mentioned in the book, but now a success that has inspired others like it around the world--would be a good replacement for more-or-less the second half of this book.
July 14, 2023
Although I'm still in the early chapters, this book is hitting all the right notes. Catherine Tumber demonstrates a level of awareness and empathy rare in our era of culture war skirmishes. I have wondered for a long time whether America's small industrial cities have at least an ace in the hole that will help revitalize both these cities and the surrounding rural landscape. I'm looking forward to learn more from her.
August 8, 2017
I do not disagree with Tumber's assertion that small cities have been at best lumped into "small towns" and at worst overlooked as planners (and politicians) have attempted to plan for the near- and medium-term future. I found her description of the evolution of the bias against small cities edifying, and I must confess that I was embarrassed to realize that I have indulged some of the metropolitan prejudices she outlines here.
After reading the introductory paragraph alone, it does seem incredible that any professional would focus only on linking large cities and, effectively, let small cities fend for themselves. I wholeheartedly support a vision that takes into account not only "centers of gravity" but also surrounding regions. Further, I am also convinced that smaller cities, given their access to open spaces and historical expertise in both agriculture and industry, can forge a unique economic path.
Of the three paths suggested- agriculture, industry and energy- I was most impressed with the author's arguments in favor of the first two. Several of the areas that the author profiled have already seen successes in the last two decades in agriculture, although the challenge now appears to be making the produce both available and attractive to more immediately local customers. (However, as one of Tumber's subjects points out, the one-hundred mile rule is an arbitrary measurement.) As far as industry, while it would be a mistake to wait for manufacturing on the scale of the car industry to return to this country, many small cities have a legacy left from "Detroit" to be able to take advantage of opportunities to build small- and medium-size parts, and new opportunities in energy innovation.
Tumber also makes the valid point that a small city's size itself is an inherent asset; a large city may take years to even formulate a plan to address deficits in services, but a small city might be able to make a turnaround in just one year. (The city of Rochester, New York was able to do just that to help refinance their public transportation system.)
As much as I found many of Tumber's arguments and examples compelling, this wasn’t a perfect book for me. I cringed when I read her description of Janesville, Wisconsin in the first chapter. According to Tumber, African-Americans were explicitly told to move to another neighborhood, so thus the predominantly white city never had to worry about "white flight." That's one way of putting it, but it would have made for a more complete picture if Tumber had mentioned that city's continuing history of Ku Klux Klan activity. Also, while I felt she made a case for increasing the number of small farms in and near small cities, I didn't feel her argument that "green energy" would be a viable investment for those regions was nearly as convincing, in large part because there were no success stories to draw from as there were for agriculture. Additionally, there was no consideration in her discussion for where the toxic waste products of some of these alternative technologies would go. (Please see Ozzie Zehner's Green Illusions for more on this.)
While I appreciated the short length of the book, it frequently meandered, and at times I wasn't sure what point the author was trying to make. Finally, the book simply ended; it would have been helpful to have had a page or two that provided a high-level summation of what the book had been about, and not simply a final paragraph tacked onto the last section…about public schools.
Overall, I would recommend this book for anyone interested in regional and national planning, with the caveat that this is indeed a book that embraces breadth and not depth and that you will be required to seek out other sources for a more thorough examination of the issues Tumber presents.
After reading the introductory paragraph alone, it does seem incredible that any professional would focus only on linking large cities and, effectively, let small cities fend for themselves. I wholeheartedly support a vision that takes into account not only "centers of gravity" but also surrounding regions. Further, I am also convinced that smaller cities, given their access to open spaces and historical expertise in both agriculture and industry, can forge a unique economic path.
Of the three paths suggested- agriculture, industry and energy- I was most impressed with the author's arguments in favor of the first two. Several of the areas that the author profiled have already seen successes in the last two decades in agriculture, although the challenge now appears to be making the produce both available and attractive to more immediately local customers. (However, as one of Tumber's subjects points out, the one-hundred mile rule is an arbitrary measurement.) As far as industry, while it would be a mistake to wait for manufacturing on the scale of the car industry to return to this country, many small cities have a legacy left from "Detroit" to be able to take advantage of opportunities to build small- and medium-size parts, and new opportunities in energy innovation.
Tumber also makes the valid point that a small city's size itself is an inherent asset; a large city may take years to even formulate a plan to address deficits in services, but a small city might be able to make a turnaround in just one year. (The city of Rochester, New York was able to do just that to help refinance their public transportation system.)
As much as I found many of Tumber's arguments and examples compelling, this wasn’t a perfect book for me. I cringed when I read her description of Janesville, Wisconsin in the first chapter. According to Tumber, African-Americans were explicitly told to move to another neighborhood, so thus the predominantly white city never had to worry about "white flight." That's one way of putting it, but it would have made for a more complete picture if Tumber had mentioned that city's continuing history of Ku Klux Klan activity. Also, while I felt she made a case for increasing the number of small farms in and near small cities, I didn't feel her argument that "green energy" would be a viable investment for those regions was nearly as convincing, in large part because there were no success stories to draw from as there were for agriculture. Additionally, there was no consideration in her discussion for where the toxic waste products of some of these alternative technologies would go. (Please see Ozzie Zehner's Green Illusions for more on this.)
While I appreciated the short length of the book, it frequently meandered, and at times I wasn't sure what point the author was trying to make. Finally, the book simply ended; it would have been helpful to have had a page or two that provided a high-level summation of what the book had been about, and not simply a final paragraph tacked onto the last section…about public schools.
Overall, I would recommend this book for anyone interested in regional and national planning, with the caveat that this is indeed a book that embraces breadth and not depth and that you will be required to seek out other sources for a more thorough examination of the issues Tumber presents.
October 5, 2015
Given that I have been pursuing an off-again-on-again research project on mid-sized cities for close to two years now, you'd think that coming across a book like this--a serious but also affirming study of the political, economic, and environmental struggles and possibilities which face cities of a small or "middling" size, say from 50,000 to 500,000 people--would have been just another addition to the pile. Well, it wasn't. In fact, my first reaction to the initial pages of this wonderful study was terror, of the sort only academics can experience: "Crap! Someone else has already written the book I want to write!!" But my subsequent reaction--once I realized that my more theoretical aims weren't undercut by Tumber's terrific research, but rather could stand alongside it as a complement--was of almost unvarnished delight. This is really great reportage: a writer with a strong point, passionately sifting through the data, giving substance to her arguments about cities she cares deeply about.
The basic thesis of the book is that in a world in which, thanks to climate change and the general breakdown of reliable energy systems which even the more modest projects of the future suggest will be unavoidable, operating in a more sustainable and less carbon-dependent manner is a necessity, smaller sized cities will better be able to manage the difficult transitions than either large metropolises or small towns. Tumber develops this thesis by way of close investigations of the more green and environmentally conscious options out there for public transportation, farming, energy production, land development, capital formation, and the way in which many of them either are already underway or easily could be in her target cities (most particularly the smaller former industrial cities of the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Upper Midwest--Rochester, NY; Youngstown, OH; Muncie, IN; Holyoke, MA; etc.). Not all of these chapters are equally persuasive (the food chapters were the best, in my opinion), but all of them are lit up with strong prose excitedly communicating actual possibilities. As an added bonus, the book is a terrific introduction to the whole place of the small or mid-size city in America's history of urban reflections; she gives smart and often counter-intuitive readings of Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford, and discovers in the novelists and urbanists of a hundred years ago an engagement with exactly the sort of feeling of being "invisible" which anyone who wants to write about regional cities cannot avoid. In short, there wasn't a page of this book that I didn't learn something from. Pick it up, give it a read, and allow its enthusiasm to shed some light in your mind on the possibilities for "fly-over" America in the decades to come.
The basic thesis of the book is that in a world in which, thanks to climate change and the general breakdown of reliable energy systems which even the more modest projects of the future suggest will be unavoidable, operating in a more sustainable and less carbon-dependent manner is a necessity, smaller sized cities will better be able to manage the difficult transitions than either large metropolises or small towns. Tumber develops this thesis by way of close investigations of the more green and environmentally conscious options out there for public transportation, farming, energy production, land development, capital formation, and the way in which many of them either are already underway or easily could be in her target cities (most particularly the smaller former industrial cities of the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Upper Midwest--Rochester, NY; Youngstown, OH; Muncie, IN; Holyoke, MA; etc.). Not all of these chapters are equally persuasive (the food chapters were the best, in my opinion), but all of them are lit up with strong prose excitedly communicating actual possibilities. As an added bonus, the book is a terrific introduction to the whole place of the small or mid-size city in America's history of urban reflections; she gives smart and often counter-intuitive readings of Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford, and discovers in the novelists and urbanists of a hundred years ago an engagement with exactly the sort of feeling of being "invisible" which anyone who wants to write about regional cities cannot avoid. In short, there wasn't a page of this book that I didn't learn something from. Pick it up, give it a read, and allow its enthusiasm to shed some light in your mind on the possibilities for "fly-over" America in the decades to come.
April 30, 2012
Rarely has a book title called out to me so immediately and fervently than this one, so I had high hopes going in. I can't say I was disappointed, but I wasn't blown away either. The reporting was not as in depth as expected, which I suppose should have been obvious from the small number of pages meant to cover a relatively complex topic in many locations. One of the author's opinions about an Ohio-based company also seemed pretty uninformed, making me question the amount of time spent in the other small cities. The writing was also a bit dry at times, and the last chapter did not seem very connected to the rest of the book.
That said, I would still recommend this book to someone new to the topic. It gets across the potential in small cities, especially in the rust belt, for re-imagining land use in ways larger cities can't. If you're into the growing local food movement and the potential for renewable energy clusters, this book could even be more up your alley.
That said, I would still recommend this book to someone new to the topic. It gets across the potential in small cities, especially in the rust belt, for re-imagining land use in ways larger cities can't. If you're into the growing local food movement and the potential for renewable energy clusters, this book could even be more up your alley.
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November 17, 2011Review: http://bit.ly/suLwU5
Catherine Tumber's "excellent new book, Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America's Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World, finds potential in many busted and booming-again cities in the Northeast and Midwest..."
"So how do these small cities, long derided as provincial and irrelevant, prepare for the future that Tumber sees coming? She focuses on several broad topics... controlling sprawl and redeveloping the suburban fringe, developing agriculture in and around the city, reviving small-scale manufacturing, and redesigning economic networks and school systems. All of these topics involve interlocking policy conundrums that may be more easily navigated in small cities, where relationships are closer and bureaucracy less entangling."
Catherine Tumber's "excellent new book, Small, Gritty, and Green: The Promise of America's Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World, finds potential in many busted and booming-again cities in the Northeast and Midwest..."
"So how do these small cities, long derided as provincial and irrelevant, prepare for the future that Tumber sees coming? She focuses on several broad topics... controlling sprawl and redeveloping the suburban fringe, developing agriculture in and around the city, reviving small-scale manufacturing, and redesigning economic networks and school systems. All of these topics involve interlocking policy conundrums that may be more easily navigated in small cities, where relationships are closer and bureaucracy less entangling."
March 1, 2014
Having been a community development major in college and with an interest in sustainability I of course was immediately drawn to Catherine Tumber's book. It is very informative and interesting. While much of our focus has been on how big cities can become more sustainable Tumber makes the point about how smaller cities are often in a better position to become more sustainable places as they have transportation infrastructure in place and are often located closer to farmlands. Hoorah for those older rust belt smaller cities! There is hope. For "The greenies" out there, you won't want to miss reading this book.
June 22, 2015
2.5 stars. I really have to say this was ho hum. I didn't learn to much and didn't get excited about something that could be done differently in cities. I found the writing to be academic and honest, but not engaging and while the history was spot on, I didn't see much value in it other than as filler. This 211 page book becomes 137 when you remove the notes/citations. When you break it down to the important parts, it is closer to 75. If you want to read a better assessment of conditions in small cities. Check out James Howard Kuntsler or other more engaging authors.
May 13, 2018
A very dense and detailed look at how smaller industrial cities can help contribute to a low-carbon world, and develop strong, individual self-sustaining local communities. Much of the book is fairly wonky, so reading the book won't necessarily get you the best understanding without further research. That said, it's a useful text, especially bridging the gap between the large cities and the farmlands, especially when it comes to urban planning and the need to understand that smaller communities can go low-carbon.
September 4, 2012
A real eye-opener -- and for all the grim news, there's a spark of hope here. There's a future, people, in small cities! Great read.
January 22, 2014
Well-researched and well-written, this books offers hope for the future of small cities.
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