Burgum's answers on rural, small-town economic battle with 'Generica' suburbs are among best I've heard from any presidential candidate in three decades
GOP presidential candidate talks rural development with Iowa Mercury in Denison
DENISON, Iowa
It's the defining issue in Iowa. Heartbreak in rural towns. Heave-Ho! construction in the suburbs.
Framing it further, we are talking about rural decline versus the explosive growth in certain corridors, the economically bulging Des Moines suburbs and the Iowa City-Cedar Rapids corridor.
But it is such byzantine business that few politicians really dig into it.
And although it should be what every rural Iowan factors most heavily into their voting decisions, few do.
Drive into Des Moines through Grimes or Altoona and each week you witness development happening at breakneck speed — as if you are viewing it through a time-lapse lense that accelerates the video at thousands-of-times normal speed. Meanwhile, we see dwindling downtowns and atrophying aspirations in sweeps of rural Iowa.
Is it just the market, the invisible hand of capitalism -- inevitable, this great intra-state migration of optimism and energy from rural Iowa to the cities?
I've asked versions of this question to candidates at all levels for the better part of three decades.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a Republican presidential candidate, clearly understands the stakes and the scope of what is a rural crisis as well as anyone of either party I've interviewed.
"I'm just a small-town kid," Burgum says.
Burgum hails from Arthur, North Dakota, a community of about 300 people. He worked his way through college, North Dakota State University, sweeping chimneys and went on to earn a master's in business administration from Stanford University and founded a tech company, Great Plains Software, an organization so successful that Microsoft acquired it.
I talked with Burgum following a town hall in Denison, Iowa, a western reach of the state, at some length about rural economic development, why small towns are struggling, his thoughts on suburbs. At one point, thinking we were done and repectful of his need to leave Denison for other cities, I turned off my tape recorder. He smiled, told me to turn it back on, that rural development was his wheelhouse, that he had more to say, even it made him late for an upcoming tour.
And Burgum had a lot to say about small towns, rural America, and our relationship with the growing cities. Burgum has a command of small-town, ag-based life, that is on the level with U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and former U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.
"I think that a lot of the edge growth you see in American cities, around the rings, some of it is market forces, but there's a lot of federal subsidies that support that," Burgum said. "It starts with the DOT (Department of Transportation.) Go to any city in America that's suburban, that all looks the same, that I'll call ‘Generica’ — they have strip malls, malls and drive-through restaurants — and you look at your speedometer. You are on a ‘Strode.’ A Strode is neither a street or a highway."
Often the highways are multi-lane, constructed with large percentages of the budget filled with federal money, and suited for big box stores and nationally owned chains — all of which thrive at the expense of central business, old downtown, small businesses, Burgum said.
"No developer, no community, would ever say, 'I think we are going to build an 11-lane-wide thing on the edge to support businesses that are going to crush our homegrown local businesses,’" Burgum said. "No one would do that if it was their money. Then if the federal government is going to give you 80 percent, then, well, like they better take it."
So called "edge development" is not good for cities and small towns, he said.
"Capital has been flowing to the edge all over America because we have made it very profitable for edge developers bcause of federal subsidies," Burgum said.
Burgum said it is possible to map cities, small towns, just as farmers do with fields, to determine the most productive property. The downtowns, even in smaller communities, can function with fewer property taxes, giving residents and businesses more value than "edge developments," he said.
"On the thin edge it's all red because they consume more in resources than what they actually produce in revenue, by a lot," Burgum said. "The bright, shiny new edge is a money loser for taxpayers, the old dilapidated downtowns. I'm telling you, in every town I've been in Iowa, it's the same thing. I've done it in small towns in North Dakota. We've hired the analysis. We've done it. You can take a town that's a 1,500-person community and their main street, even if its only half full. is still a money maker — and the new Dollar General out on the edge, loser."
Douglas Burns, a fourth-generation Iowa journalist, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. He lives in Carroll, Iowa, where his family operated the Carroll Time Herald for 93 years.
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