Southern Hills Economic Development Corporation

09/17/2025

07/13/2025

Business for sale in Hot Springs SD.

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06/30/2025

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Want to get people fired up? Mention the word density. Or worse… urbanism.

You’d think I just suggested replacing their grandma with a parking meter. The pitchforks come out fast.

But here’s the deal, I work with small towns, places under 50,000 people, because they’re the ones struggling the most. And the reason they’re struggling isn’t because people stopped caring, it’s because the economy stopped working for them. Every day that Wall Street does better, these communities do worse.

It’s not a mystery. National chains are publicly traded companies, which means they exist to please shareholders. And shareholders want growth. That growth comes from new locations in new towns, bleeding local economies dry in the process. Every Chipotle, Target, or Chase branch is just an extraction point. Your town is the mine, and the gold is your local wealth.

Fifty years ago, your town had a hardware store, a shoe store, a book store, a pet store, a grocer, an appliance shop, and they were all locally owned. Those businesses paid local taxes, supported Little League, and sent their kids to school down the block. Today, all of those businesses are just aisles inside one big box store, owned by faceless entity thousands of miles away.

And while we were busy chasing growth, we forgot that our original towns already had it right. They were compact. Walkable. Built for people, not cars. Downtowns were places to live, work, meet friends, raise families, and run into your neighbors. There was pride, ownership, and human connection built into the design. Turns out, that wasn’t old-fashioned, that was smart.

The rise of the car and the national chain killed all that. And we didn’t just let it happen, we paved the way. Literally. We subsidized it with new roads, wider intersections, sprawling infrastructure, and zoning codes that banned the very places we used to love.

Want to reverse the damage? Start here

- Density is not the enemy.
- Walkability is not a threat.
- Urbanism is not a dirty word.

These ideas aren’t new or radical. Our grandparents lived them. Our great-grandparents built them. They still work in towns across the world today. The best cities. those with the most pride, the healthiest economies, the strongest sense of place. they all have one thing in common, good urbanism.

If you want more local businesses, more wealth staying in your town, more community pride, and more tax revenue per acre, you need to build the kind of places where that’s possible. That means density, proximity, and local ownership.

More parking lots won’t save you. Another chain won’t make your town unique. Density won’t kill your town. It might be the only thing that can save it.

03/06/2025

Eric Garcia Luna , regional outreach for the Federal Reserve Bank on Minneapolis, speaks at the Elevate Rapid Economic Development Summit.

01/29/2025

Take advantage of this free service for your children on Feburary 11th at the Bison Center, HotSprings School District!

06/28/2024

Congratulations Edgemont south Dakota!

05/23/2024

Nestled around the beauty of the southern Black Hills is the quiet town of Hot Springs. A tourist community that sees tens of thousands of visitors each year, made popular by the town’s natural springs and the Mammoth Site, Hot Springs is a unique community that is thriving.

05/23/2024

Energize Youth Entreprenuer Panel.