Small Towns

Historical Development of Small Towns

The definition of what constitutes a small town is highly dependent upon the level of development found in a particular society.

For most of human history, people lived in nomadic or seminomadic groups, and hence there were no permanent towns. In some regions, particularly those near water or on major trading routes, permanent villages grew around an economy based on fishing or, more significantly, agriculture. In fact, agriculture has been, for the majority of human societies, a prerequisite for small towns and cities, because they rely on the steady provision of food from within a relatively small geographic area. Not surprisingly, most early small towns grew up near major rivers, such as the Nile in Egypt, the Indus in India, the Yellow in China, and the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Villages on or near rivers allowed for a varied food source that included fish and agricultural products such as rice and wheat that could be grown along the fertile shores of the river valley. To such ancient peoples, a small town would have been defined as a small, relatively autonomous village of no more than a few hundred residents. The economy would have been dominated by farming, fishing, and small crafts meant to facilitate those endeavors.

At the core of small towns are certain public buildings such as the town hall, the public library, churches, and schools. This photo is of the Free Library in Egremont, Massachusetts, in 2001.

Stephen G. Donaldson Photography; used with permission.

From ancient times until the dawn of the industrial revolution beginning in the eighteenth century CE, most small towns continued in the tradition of being relatively economically independent. As the Middle Ages progressed, small towns were also bases for the production of various goods, such as barrels, wheels, and metalwork. In some cases, small towns with good access to distant markets, such as those on water or major land routes, grew as demand for their goods grew with trade. During this period, however, most cities had populations that were, by modern standards, not much larger than small towns. Cities such as London, Paris, and Berlin typically had populations of fewer than 10,000 residents. For the time, however, they were quite large; many villages had 500 or fewer residents.

In modern times, what is meant by the term “small town” is quite different from what the term meant historically. What has not been lost is the notion of “small” in relation to “big,” that is, cities. As the industrial revolution gave rise to urban centers to unprecedented size, many small towns also grew to unheard-of populations. By the end of the nineteenth century, it was not uncommon for formerly rural communities to have grown to the populations of the urban centers only a few centuries earlier. As cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas grew to hundreds of thousands and even millions of residents, many small towns approached 10,000 and even 25,000 residents. Although the population grew, their status as “small towns” was unchanged due to the growth in the cities.

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