04/17/2025
Thank You Shannon Renee Beemer for sharing this with us! ♥️
Let’s cut to it: Bigger is not better. It’s just… bigger. And chasing growth for growth’s sake? That’s not a strategy. That’s a sugar rush in policy form—quick hit, long crash.
Recently, while working in a community, someone asked the golden question: Should cities focus on growing their population, jobs, and development?
Absolutely not.
That’s the most common, most misguided approach in the playbook. It sounds bold. It sounds visionary. But it’s lazy. Because not all growth is good growth.
Think of it like this: If I told you that you personally needed to grow—what would you picture? Adding muscle, getting healthier, gaining strength? Or just… putting on weight? Because if it’s just about numbers, you could sit on the couch eating gas station nachos and drinking Miller Lite. You’d grow. But you wouldn’t be better.
Same goes for our cities. Sprawl isn’t strength. More strip malls don’t build resilience. A dozen new fast food joints doesn’t make your town self-reliant—it just makes it easier to get a cheap burger.
Growth should be the byproduct of getting better, not the goal itself.
If your town becomes more beautiful, more walkable, more connected, more locally focused—guess what? People will notice. They’ll visit. Some will stay. That is healthy growth. But it starts with improvement.
We’ve got to stop measuring success in square footage and traffic counts. Start measuring it in dignity, joy, pride, and resilience. Does this new project make your town stronger, more self-sufficient, more livable?
Ask that. Every time.
Because bad growth is easy. Good growth is earned.
It’s time we stop chasing size and start building substance. Better beats bigger every single time.
