Stagnant against the odds
Stagnant economies and populations tell the tale of New Mexican college towns. Outside of Albuquerque and Las Cruces, college towns in New Mexico struggle despite growth in college towns nationwide.
How does one create a great city?
The late Senator of New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan responded to that question by saying, “Create a great university, and wait 200 years.”
If you were to watch the average US college town evolve over the past 100 years, you would likely see population and economic growth, people-centric urban planning, more educated people, etc. Universities are meant to improve the quality of life in their communities, and, for the most part, they’ve done that.
Often the largest employers in their cities, universities are economic hubs that attract businesses and skilled individuals, house resources for their community, play a leading role in innovation, and educate societal leaders. There should be no dispute that the US university system has contributed to the US’s success, especially in the last 100 years. Despite obvious issues with higher ed - like how expensive it has become, the poor salaries of adjunct professors, and arguably some mission drift - the US university system has been a net positive for the country.
Bozeman, MT, Oxford, MS, Cedar City, UT, and San Marcos, TX grew the most out of all college towns in the US from 2000 to 2023, with growth of around 100% in that timeframe. Las Cruces, NM was the 15th fastest-growing college town since 2000, but no other New Mexican city can be found in the top 150 for population growth since 2000.
Cities like Socorro, Silver City, Portales, Las Vegas, and Espanola, home to key higher-ed institutions in New Mexico, have struggled to build meaningful economies off of their colleges, and the problem needs fixing so these communities can thrive and grow.
Today’s post is about this lack of growth, and a couple of things that can be done to help small college towns in New Mexico break the chains of stagnation and population loss.
Socorro is the Spanish word for “help,” and that might be what the city needs. Socorro, New Mexico is a small college town on the banks of the Rio Grande and I-25. The city proudly houses the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech or NMT) - often regarded as the best higher-education school in New Mexico, and one of the best STEM schools in the nation. Despite having a great school, access to I-25 and the Rio Grande, good weather, and plenty of outdoorsy stuff to do, the city has had a stagnant economy and population for decades.
Unfortunately, the story is similar in other small college towns in New Mexico:
Meanwhile, other small and medium-sized college towns near New Mexico continue to attract residents:
Last year, I wrote about how New Mexico has a population crisis. In a nutshell: New Mexico’s population virtually stopped growing after the Great Recession while neighboring states kept growing:
Most of the state’s population growth, before 2008, happened in either rural areas or the top four markets - Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, Santa Fe, and Las Cruces. As you saw in some of the graphs above, college towns in New Mexico (outside of Albuquerque and Las Cruces) weren’t growing before the Great Recession, let alone after - likely due to poor job opportunities, a lack of investment in infrastructure and housing, and a complicated history of poverty and cultural tensions within New Mexico.
Amidst a nation-wide rural flight trend, college towns in New Mexico are not doing their job to attract people fleeing rural towns. They haven’t grown in decades, and the problem has accelerated in recent years. The Santa Fe New Mexican, in 2018, wrote:
Socorro County has not seen a new subdivision in more than a decade, and the overall employment levels are still below the levels of 2007, the year the recession hit. The one institution stabilizing Socorro’s economy, the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, has grown by about 500 students over the past decade to 2,100 students and 170 faculty and staff….
As it turns out, since 2018, enrollment at NMT has dropped to 1,712 students - a nearly 20% decrease in seven years. On top of enrollment decreases, some faculty and staff opt to live in Albuquerque and commute to Socorro. This makes sense - Albuquerque has more activities and housing options. At the time I’m writing this, there are only four homes for rent in Socorro on Zillow.
I think it’s obvious something should be done to revitalize Socorro, Espanola, Portales, and Silver City, but what?
To attract people, cities need jobs, and to attract jobs, you need housing and infrastructure capable of making it all happen, and the built environment needs to be climate-resilient and emission-cutting. We should be looking for ways to optimize transportation and build vibrant urban environments that make people healthier, richer, and happier. On the University side, academic institutions need to collaborate more with city governments and communities to help align goals and share resources.
Better housing, urbanism, and infrastructure - Young people, more and more, want to live sustainably. A mixed-use, walkable style of development with denser housing and public transit helps make college towns accessible and vibrant. To compete with the likes of Durango, Flagstaff, and Tucson, New Mexican college towns need to differentiate themselves through a great built environment.
State and local governments should expand the Rail Runner to Socorro, Las Cruces, Espanola, and Las Vegas, and build transportation centers in all municipalities in New Mexico. The transportation centers should host bus and rail services, and be near the university and main plaza. Around the transportation centers, zoning laws should be mixed-use and medium to high-density.
Connecting all of our major towns by train would ensure equitable and climate-friendly transportation throughout the state. The Rail Runner offers a convenient, climate-friendly way for state employees, students, and more, to get between Belen, Los Lunas, Albuquerque, and Santa Fe. Towns like Socorro would suddenly be ready to navigate the next 100 years of climate change.
Job creation - Most jobs created in New Mexico today are in one of the top four biggest cities (or in the oil country). Netflix, Facebook, and Amazon choose to do business in the Albuquerque Metro mostly because there are human resources, infrastructure, and local universities and trade schools. One of the core competencies of a university should be its ability to spur economic growth and vibrancy within a community.
Marc Schlossberg, co-founder of the Sustainable Cities Initiative (SCI), said in an interview:
Cities are faced with growing challenges and shrinking budgets, and universities are in a position to help–right now. City staff need ideas on how to retrofit cities for more sustainability but often lack the time, personnel, or resources to access the latest knowledge and thinking. At the same time, students and faculty at universities across the country are studying and creating valuable new ideas every day. All we need to do is connect the two.
The University of New Mexico (UNM) has a nonprofit called “Rainforest Innovations” whose mission is “To foster a Rainforest in the Desert, UNM Rainforest Innovations nurtures innovation and catalyzes economic development.” They help the community build companies that align with the core competencies of the city and the university, and offer programs that help get companies off the ground. While Albuquerque is far from perfect, it is starting to do some good things for urbanism, climate, and job creation that may just pay off in the long run.
Smaller college towns in New Mexico may never attract big tech giants, but they could build bigger, more resilient economies. To foster job growth, these cities need to find target industries, whether it’s agriculture, energy, tech, healthcare, etc., and leverage the school to develop an economy around those industries. Today, it’s hard to tell what direction some of these towns are trying to go, and some of the universities don’t even mention economic development in their strategic plan.
At the end of the day, people are more likely to move somewhere, or stay somewhere, if they feel like the future is bright there. They want to feel more secure about job prospects, healthcare, transportation accessibility, climate change, etc. Stagnation in New Mexico’s college towns is deeply rooted in poverty and brain drain, and climate change is the next hurdle, but it’s also an opportunity to adapt and grow.
To fix the challenges of stagnation, we don’t need some magic bullet, we need to build on existing infrastructure and institutions. Community collaboration and public investment in infrastructure send a message to future residents that these cities are on the rise and aren’t going anywhere.
None of New Mexico’s colleges are 200 years old yet, so if it truly takes 200 years to create a great city from a university, we have yet to see the end of the story for these small college towns.
Great piece, Austin!
Fantastic article!