An Iowa State University rural sociologist has identified a dozen small towns in Iowa where the quality of life is thriving despite losses in population. Dave Peters calls them “shrink-smart” towns. He says a high quality of life doesn’t depend so much on a strong local economy, but rather on solid social connections.
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Iowa State has been tracking life in towns with fewer than ten-thousand (10,000) people in each of the state’s 99 counties since 1994. In these shrink-smart towns, citizen have managed to bridge divides created by economic class, ethnicity and gender.
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The shrink-smart towns Peters identifies range in population from 460 in the Mills County town of Pacific Junction to around 21-hundred (2,100) in Sac City. Nine of the 12 towns named by Peters to the list have populations fewer than one thousand (1,000). They include Allerton, Elma, Radcliffe and Elk Horn.
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The shrink-smart towns, in alphabetical order, are Allerton, Bancroft, Correctionville, Elk Horn, Elma, Everly, Grand Mound, Hamburg, Mediapolis, Pacific Junction, Radcliffe and Sac City.