A great profile of Lewisburg, Greenbrier County, in the Charleston Gazette today provides some valuable insights into the hard work and attention to the "little things" required to transform an area into one of the nation's best small towns. It's a lesson on vision, leadership, persistence and trade-off decisions.
In the case of Lewisburg, architect Tag Galyean was a key leader. As mentioned in an earlier post, architects can play a key role in developing and documenting the vision for a region.
In many ways, the future of West Virginia's New Economy growth is based on re-defining the concept of small town living. A profile of Lewisburg in the New York Times described it as "country living with a cosmopolitan edge." Much has been written about the Creative Class and its tendency to cluster around major urban centers. Can we develop a compelling alternative with more sophisticated small towns that don't require such dramatic trade-offs in cultural, academic and business opportunities when compared to larger cities?
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