November 6, 2012
Elizabeth Scott, Communications Intern, US EPA, for the Smart Growth Network

Anyone who has found themselves at a local grocery store or perusing Main Street on a Saturday morning knows that using local merchants for fresh produce, coffee, and home goods is becoming more popular. Smaller towns and larger cities are both reaping the benefits of the “buy local” movement that brings community members together in support of local business and economies. However, lots of planning must occur to stimulate existing communities and create new infrastructure that gives way to meaningful relationships between local merchants and community members.

Places like Cleveland, Mississippi and Indianapolis, Indiana have worked to create a community economy that supports local businesses. Buildings that sat empty for years are now home to restaurants, bars, boutiques, coffee shops, and other specialty stores that have transformed the towns’ main streets into hubs for community engagement and social interaction. The video below, produced by Epic Whim Media for Untold Indy, features commentary by Indianapolis community members who discuss why they choose to buy and shop locally: Indianapolis community members share their view on why it pays to buy locally. (Click here for video) Buying locally and the success of local merchants often hinge on the presence of what Ben Schulman refers to as "real places." Schulman, the Communications Director for the Congress for the New Urbanism, submitted a post to the National Conversation on the Future of Our Communities Blog that chronicles the ways buying locally and purposeful infrastructure intertwine to create an exchange between merchants and local citizens. In the post below, he characterizes the movement’s beginning and the ways it can continue to thrive with the help of community planners and urban designers. "The bumper stickers started to feel ubiquitous in the late '90s, when big-box retail seemed to be hammering the final nail in the coffin of Main Street. Sprawl was spreading. Horizontal growth was equated with economic growth, and commerce was being transacted in increasingly isolated malls and monolithic buildings detached and detracting from any sense of community. A peculiar thing happened on the way away from Main Street though. At first, it seemed like just a slogan, found here and there among rusty Volvo bumpers or in the window of some upstart coffeehouse. The phrase 'buy local' boldly standing out as a badge of honor for those who already paid heed to its meaning, as well as a call to those who came across it became a calling card for a movement that has now become mainstream. Buy local means more than just supporting your local merchants, restaurants, and wholesalers by patronizing them. It means supporting the type of infrastructure that allows those businesses to operate on a smaller scale. It means appreciating and investing in designs that enhance a community’s sense of place. Strip malls off the highway don't fulfill that function. Streets designed at a human-scale, within a finely grained network that allows for a mix of small and large businesses complementing one another, is at the heart of the movement…. It creates room for the frame shop to showcase its wares, next to the sandwich shop that buys all its bread from the bakery down the street. There’s even a place for the larger retailer… who designs a context-sensitive store that blends into the community while providing needed amenities." http://www.visitclevelandms.com/index.php/media-photos/special-events.html "'Buy local' encourages the kind of positive economic competition that can only be fostered in the incremental structure of real places places that fulfill the need to explore, to interact and, of course, to shop. It's more than a credo, it's an economic development plan supported-and based- on good urban design." — Ben Schulman Investment in these designs creates a return to the Main Street, USA feel of America's towns and cities that make them attractive places to shop. This means revitalizing old community infrastructure and Main Streets to foster an environment where local businesses can prosper. Why is buying locally important to you? How do you think the creation of new infrastructure and the renewal of existing infrastructure can help foster an environment where local businesses and communities thrive? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.