The New York Times reports [why do they require a login?] that towns around colleges are just as important as the colleges themselves in attracting faculty and students:

Colleges have traditionally tempted top students with ivy-covered campuses, towering Gothic buildings and up-to-date student centers. But nowadays, there is a sense that a beautiful campus is not enough. An alluring college town is seen as necessary as well.

Our small town has a university but the town itself has had some difficulties over the past few years, with business and store closures. This past weekend, a 150 year-old building, on the main downtown corner, burnt and was completely destroyed. No one was injured.

[Note: Project Rebuild is focused on helping out those who were left homeless by the fire.]

Perhaps this is also an opportunity for us to rethink the important connection between the university, the town and what attracts and retains people. What could be built on this key intersection that would enhance a sense of community? Should it be retail; residential; a town square?

Via Christian Long, at Think: Lab

I’m working on an introductory piece (about 2 printed pages) for people who know nothing about the Commons. My aim is to explain enough so that people are interested and will ask more questions. Feedback is always appreciated.

Our Commons

For a long period of time, human economic development was tied to the land. The elites owned the land, and various types of workers, from serfs to sharecroppers, produced crops for the landowners. During the Agrarian Age, land was the most valuable commodity.

Even though large engines and other physical capital had been around in the 18th century, it was not until the early 20th century that a large number of workers were able to leave the farm. The automobile and highways made it possible for many people to commute to factories to work as employees. With the arrival of the tractor, one person was able to farm much more land than was previously possible with a team of horses. Larger farms were now viable and farm workers were lured to higher paying factory jobs. During the Industrial Age, physical capital, such as a factory, was the most valuable commodity.

Today, less than 2% of Canadians work on farms, yet we can all eat. At the same time, the industrial sector is shrinking, but there is no shortage of manufactured goods. The only sector that is growing is the knowledge sector. At some time in the near future, knowledge work will outnumber manufacturing jobs. I say knowledge work, not jobs, because much of this work is not as salaried employees.

Knowledge work is not information work. It is work that creates something new, such as a story, a design, or a service. Some knowledge workers can create new services, such as a digital photo sharing service. This is the case of Vancouver-based Flickr, whose husband and wife founders sold their service to Yahoo for $30 million. In the Internet Age, the most valuable commodity is human creativity.

If a community is to thrive in the Internet Age, it must be attractive to knowledge workers. These workers need to be connected to other knowledge workers so that they can stay creative. They need to have constant access to fresh ideas. One way to attract knowledge workers is to offer the right physical space and connections. Because many knowledge workers are not employees, they don’t need conventional office space. Many are starting to create their own alternative spaces in cities such as London, Toronto, Vancouver and even Charlottetown. Take a look in any city and you will see people working with wireless enabled computers in what has become the default third-space – the coffee shop.

Now, a new third-space, the work commons, is being created where workers pay a monthly membership to have access to shared work areas and business services. No one owns an office, because no one needs a full-time space. It would be a waste. The idea behind the Tantramar Commons is to provide the physical space in Sackville for a work commons. The model for the work commons has been established and is successful, covering its costs, nurturing innovation between sectors and growing entrepreneurs; all at a minimal capital cost.

The presence of a work commons will encourage communication between entrepreneurs, who need additional space, and will be a focal point to attract knowledge workers from outside the area. Other commons are currently looking at creating a worldwide network to share ideas and services.

In addition to a work commons, the Tantramar Commons will offer space to non-profit organisations in the environmental and cultural sectors. These sectors are important to ensure our sustainabilty as a community. Sackville has a certain critical mass of organisations in these two sectors already, but we need to sustain it. There are many potential benefits of local entrepreneurs working in the same space as environmentalists and artists. The cross-pollination between sectors that don’t usually intermix will be fertile ground for innovation.

Much as the town square was the common space for community development in early America, so will the interconnected, but locally grounded, Tantramar Commons be our space for problem-solving, celebration, consolation, and knowledge creation.

In speaking with Robert Paterson about the many commons blossoming across the country, I was reminded about this statement made by John McKnight, in Community and its Counterfeits in 1994.

McKnight was referring to de Tocqueville’s famous book, Democracy in America, recounting his travels across the new country in 1831-32 (as cited in Ideas: Brilliant Thinkers Speak Their Minds (2005) Goose Lane Pub., p. 116). My emphasis added.

The book, Democracy in America, is, I think, the most useful book I know to help understand who we are. And he says, if I can summarize him in a rather gross form, that he came here and he found a society whose definitions and solutions were not created by nobility, by professionals, by experts or managers, but by what he identified as little groups of people, self-appointed, common men and women who came together and took three powers: the power to decide there was a problem, the power to decide how to solve the problem – that is, the expert’s power – and then the power to solve the problem. These little groups of people weren’t elected and they weren’t appointed and they were everyplace, and they were, he said, the heart of the new society – they were the American community as distinct from the European community. And he named these little groups “associations”. Association is the collective for citizens, an association of citizens. And so we think of our community as being the social space in which citizens in association do the work of problem-solving, celebration, consolation, and creation – that community, that space, in contrast to the space of the system with the box at the top and lots of little boxes at the bottom. And I think it is still the case that the hope for our time is in those associations.

I cannot think of a better description of what our Commons could be.