Micro-Prairie Meets Strong Towns
Micro-prairies thrive because many plants are given a chance to prosper. If conditions are good a plant will be healthy and reproduce. If conditions are bad the plant will die out but it will leave space and nutrients for something else to grow there. Certain plants concentrate nutrients which helps the plants around them thrive. There is strength in numbers and in diversity. I have watched this dynamic at work in my micro-prairie in the city.
Cities also have an ecology that benefits from diversity. If many small businesses are given a chance to grow, some will prosper and increase the health of the city. Some will not make it but those failures will not be catastrophic to the overall health of the community. Other businesses will quickly fill in those vacant spaces without the need for major, long term “redevelopment” of the site. The community grows slowly but steadily and develops diversity and resiliency to deal with adversity. This is called incremental development. You can see a good example of this in downtown Sioux Falls on Phillips Ave between 9th and 12th streets. Small businesses come and go there but the community has survived for over 100 years.
Why am I telling you this? Well, it is early March, 2023 as I write this. Looking out the window I see two feet of snow covering the micro-prairie. Streets are narrow, icy, pot-hole filled canyons of snow. My north sidewalk is snow packed and icy. It defies my attempts to clear it. I am so ready for spring! But, being cooped up inside during a two day blizzard gives one time to think about things. The things I thought about the most are micro-prairies and resilient neighborhoods. I have been planting native plants for a decade or so and I have been involved with the Strong Towns movement for resilient neighborhoods for about half of that time. This exposure has lead me to insights on both ideas.
I realized that neighborhoods, towns and cities are a lot like micro-prairies. They are made up of individual properties that grow and change over time based on local conditions. And, like a micro-prairie, the pattern of growth cannot be readily predicted — like a corn stalk coming up among the prairie grass and brown-eyed Susans (see “Squirrels Invented Agriculture”). The essence of the Strong Towns philosophy is that cities naturally develop through mostly unplanned incremental development by small businesses. However, cities in the US have been part of the Great Suburban Experiment since the 1950’s which prioritizes and subsidizes large developments on the edge of town rather than small-scale incremental development.
Chuck Marohn, the founder of Strong Towns, saw that this development pattern was creating huge amounts of infrastructure like roads and bridges that would need costly maintenance or replacement. But he also saw that the wealth created by sprawling developments was not enough to pay for this maintenance. Cities like Detroit and others that started down this path a long time ago have already gone bankrupt because they couldn’t pay for the infrastructure that was built. I was crunching data on the condition of Sioux Falls streets and I saw this same situation right here in River City.
There are a huge number of miles of street that will need work in the next few years (792 center-line miles). The miles of affected streets increases quickly because the city has been annexing whole neighborhoods on the edge of town for many years. The streets in those neighborhoods were all built at the same time and will all need maintenance at about the same time. If several neighborhoods were annexed the same year all those combined miles of streets are going to need work at the about the same time thus suddenly creating a huge backlog (it happens slowly then all at once). It is hard to see how these costs will not overwhelm our city budget because they increase so dramatically in just a few years. And my analysis did not even consider failing bridges or water/sewer systems.
People ask how we can prevent this. Well, it doesn’t look like we can prevent the city from defaulting on it’s maintenance obligations because we have been going down this road for too long— we can only try to manage outcomes. If you want to learn more about this check out the Sioux Falls Strong Towns Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1950766674936216/
I have also written several articles on how the Strong Towns insights relate to Sioux Falls at: https://medium.com/strong-sioux-falls
You can also visit the national Strong Towns site at: https://www.strongtowns.org/stmedia
Managing outcomes for cities involves encouraging more incremental development in areas where the roads and infrastructure are already built. It is a little like tearing out toxic, non-productive grass (half empty parking lots) to replace it with diverse, resilient native plants (small scale diverse commercial and residential buildings).
In the new micro-prairie, I tore out invasive creeping charlie and European bellflower roots last fall and planted a mix of woodland and short grass prairie seed mix. Infrastructure like rich, organic, well drained soil was already in place. I planted a mix of plants that will grow incrementally as they find the best place for them in the new micro-prairie. This would have been more like a big-box type development if I had carefully placed live plants exactly according to plan to create a finished-as-built layout that I didn’t want to change over time (that is what I did originally in this spot and it did not work). But, because I used a diverse seed mix, this will not be a finished-as-built layout. I will not be able to predict what this micro-prairie will look like and it will continue to evolve over time.
But, back in the micro-prairie, all this snow has been a pain for me but for rabbits it is a lot more serious. They are forced to eat whatever they can find — in this case bark off the hedge in my yard. The hedge will need pruning in the spring but it will survive. With luck, the rabbits will survive too. A small weed elm tree has been completely girdled by rabbits and probably won’t survive. Maybe deep snow is nature’s plan to control weed elm trees and preserve the prairie since we don’t have bison or wild fires in the city to do the job.
I know spring is coming but not before a few more clashes with winter. While we wait it is time to start seeds indoors if you are planning to do that. Or, in my case, plan out how I am going to add a larger pond in the garden when the snow melts. You can also order seeds for your garden or check out the seed library at Sweetgrass Soapery on Main Ave. in downtown Sioux Falls.
Keep the faith and keep doing what you can to create micro-prairies in strong towns.
