Converting civic apathy to civic pride: a case study from Marysville, Kansas

MARYSVILLE, Kan. - It's a vicious cycle: if a community doesn't have much to offer, its residents are likely to care less. And if citizens care less, they're less likely to want to make the place they live a place people want to live in.

So how can small communities across the country break that cycle? That's what Jeff Siegler's work focuses on. He's presented a program he calls Revitalize or Die across the country, applying lessons he first learned from firsthand studies in places like East Liverpool, Ohio - places he says are stuck in patterns of dysfunction, addled by a citizenry mired in a lack of passion for their place of residence. Places like that, Siegler says, are never going to get better if everything keeps staying the same.

"When I figured out that really apathy was what these towns were suffering from, that opened up a lot for me. Apathy is a very emotional response to a condition, and just doing another plan won’t fix it, so we’ve got to come up with a better idea," Siegler said in his presentation on Monday afternoon. "A community takes on the character of the people that live there. I think sometimes we overthink things in this field and think everyone needs to be experts – no, you just need to be human. If you’re a human and have emotions, you’re pretty much an expert in place. If a place doesn’t make you feel good, then why would you care? Why would you want to be there?"

This week, he's in Marysville, Kansas, where he underscored that most places reside on a continuum between civic apathy and civic pride.

"He is not here to tell us everything that is great, here is here to help us take an honest look at ourselves and figure out what needs to change," said Wayne Kruse, executive director of OneMarysville, in his introduction of the speaker. "His message: if you want a stronger town, you have to take responsibility for it. We have to pay attention to the details, raise standards, and take pride in the place we live."

Speaking at Marysville's Venue 36 - a place that used to be a skating rink, a dance hall, and the home to the VFW before becoming an event space - Siegler outlined his five main steps to increase civic pride in any small community, not just one in north central Kansas.

• Effort: working hard and working toward a goal always feels good, and progress always follows.

• Ownership: especially when it comes to shopping local.

• Beauty: the way things look matter, perhaps more than anything else.

• 'Communityness': people love to cheer on others with a shared identity like a hometown.

• Legacy: creating a long-term impact and leaving something behind.

And just like a person trying to get in shape, improving a town's civic pride can only happen over time.

"At the end of the day, I think that’s all our job is is to convert a community from one end of the continuum to the other," Siegler said. "How can we just make everybody a little more proud every day. No one can force anyone to do anything, but you can suggest. No one can force a community to get better, all you can do is show them the path. And that path is a lot of little things. It doesn’t matter where our community is on that continuum, getting a little better is the goal." 

Marysville's leadership will spend the rest of the week putting Siegler's words into practice, holding one on one sessions with local business owners and area volunteers, and running a community-wide cleanup event Thursday afternoon.

"We’re often asked, so who is your main focus? And our answer is always the residents. No matter what hat we’re wearing, we put the focus mostly on our residents, because we know that people want to travel to places where people love to live," said Kruse.

That gameplan directly reflects one of Siegler's central points: at some point, planning doesn't yield any more progress. The best way to affect change is to take action, however small it may be.

"At the end of the day, all that matters is that we take action. This is the silver bullet, this is the simple truth," he concluded. "Take a ton of action all the time – relentless incremental improvement is the only way forward. We don’t need more committees, we don’t need more surveys, we don’t need to do any more research: what we need to do is take action. Take all the various physical aspects of your community and make them nicer – that's the best way forward."