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Emergent Wisdom for University Towns

Towns that have been around for a while are often located in scenic spots - the forefathers had a vast canvas of opportunity on which to paint their new town visions, and more often than not, they picked their sites based on major travel routes, hilltops, rivers, and other scenic beauty. Wouldn't you if you could?

The location of San Marcos, established by the founders in the early days of the Texas Republic, is a continuing benefit to their descendants. It sits on the edge of the Balcones Fault, on the road in between Austin and San Antonio, now the I-35 corridor. The fault line thing is important because it cuts through Central Texas like a big gash, from the Northwest to the Southeast - the impact on towns that sit on the edge of the "Hill Country," as we call it, is to divide the town in half: the northwest half of town is hilly and the southeast half is flat. Different soil, different vegetation too. It's the same in Austin, and its quite appealing to the eye.

And make no mistake, location is one of the key economic drivers for the future, and it means more today than it ever has. San Marcos has gone from being one of the signs along the highway in between those two large cities, to being smack in the middle of economic growth that is joining those two cities, filling in the gaps as it were. In Austin's sphere of growth more than San Antonio's, San Marcos is an attractive area and can generate its own economic boom with some proactive internal decisions. On the other hand, if it remains impassive, it will grow nevertheless, but in organic fashion, acted on by others. Either way it is going to grow, because of the giants to the north and south.

A second element of change, one that all cities face in 2007 and beyond, is the impact of digitization and the Internet. The technology changes that we take for granted in Austin ripple through every city economy today. Those cities that embrace this dynamic landscape first will have a number of advantages over other cities. Those that fail to acknowledge this element of change will inevitably lag behind. Those that have an opportunistic attitude will find ways to benefit while others will be forced to spend more to accommodate the changes, making the changes either neutral or negative in total impact.

It just so happens that a subset of cities, those towns that have a university inside them or adjoining them - college towns, we like to call them - have an advantage that non-college towns lack. These towns, both large and small, have a mass of young inquisitive minds (who are also early adopters of technology) and they have a trained faculty and administration who have access to a budget and self-determination. Universities, by and large, are early adopters of wireless mesh networks for their campuses. The key is getting city leaders into harmony with university leaders and transferring some of their experience in networks, to expand that campus network into a city network. It can be done, but it's not easy.

Back to San Marcos. The question for these citizens is not if they can fight the changes of this new century, but if they can shape them to conform to their collective vision of their city and region and take advantage of the energy the changes bring to put themselves in an advantaged position.

Vision is the essence of leadership. I talk about leadership and vision a lot on these pages, it's one of my favorite topics. But to get to a collective vision requires the community to come together and have a healthy discussion. And there needs to be a sense of urgency around this task, in my opinion, lest the squabbles and disputes of old delay the community in its task and prevent it from influencing inevitable changes. I draw a lot on my own experience with dysfunction. One of the first steps out of an unproductive behavior is to acknowledge that something is wrong and focus attention on fixing the situation. It's important to replace old unhealthy habits with new, healthy ones.

In facing change, a city needs to start with an honest internal assessment of what makes it special and what qualities they want to preserve. I believe there's an easy consensus on some of those things in San Marcos, like preserving the San Marcos River. Finding early consensus can generate more consensus and momentum, helping citizens come to see what they have in common and the benefits of working together.

Another strength that we see from the outside looking in when looking at San Marcos is the dynamic Texas State University, the largest employer and home to nearly half the city's residents. I think some San Marcos citizens have become blinded over the years to the dynamic potential of this university, and conversely, some at the university underestimate the importance of their surrounding community to their future. This is another area of focus for planning, vision discussions, and consensus building.

A city facing change also needs to identify the negatives that will impact growth, the impediments or constraints that hold it back. Again, I think citizens know what they are, but making the constraints explicit will allow all to focus on them. This is one of the hardest conversations to have, and I think most towns just haven't yet had a sustained, honest and explicit conversation to define challenges, rank order them, and have a frank discussion about how best to address them or mitigate their negative aspects. This is where outsiders (consultants) can be a big help, because a third party, not unlike a counselor, can dispassionately walk them through a process to discuss these issues and put them into a context of a bigger picture of growth and the benefits it can bring. But this will be a hard pill to swallow. It's like doing sit-ups: a painful and unpleasant task, but one that provides undeniable benefits if practiced regularly.

Wireless broadband comes into this discussion because it offers a focal point for collective visioning discussions that the city needs to have. Such a project can serve as a catalyst for economic and community development. I think bringing a community together and forcing a vision conversation are implicit benefits in some successful projects around the country to date, but that such positive aspects have been largely overlooked and undervalued when bringing a citywide cloud to an area. The citizen stakeholder focus groups, public forums, and press releases about wireless broadband that we have already started in San Marcos provide an opportunity to bring into the discussion some of these other items about the community's vision for the future.

We can gently turn the discussion in that direction, if city leaders make a deliberate and conscious effort to bring out these other items. We can gain an extra benefit from listening to each other and exploring these issues while we talk about broadband, but it will be a delicate political task.

I'm convinced that harnessing and leveraging the energy and leadership inside universities is the key for college towns like San Marcos. A wireless project puts the university front and center and begs the question of how and if leaders in both the city and the university will place a priority on working together to make change happen. A wireless project will ask that question of the leadership and hopefully provide an answer to benefit the whole community in far-reaching ways.

Posted on April 20, 2007 at 07:30 AM

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