Thirty years ago, John Abrams founded the South Mountain Company, a unique design and building firm on Martha's Vineyard. Through a commitment to place and community entrepreneurship, he has seen the company grow and prosper, while at the same time experimenting with a revolutionary model that values the local above all and challenges the traditional business rhetoric of unchecked growth. Abrams, our first “Innovator in Place,” spoke with Planning Vision Director John Fox about his new book, Companies We Keep (Chelsea Green, 2005), and about reinventing small business for people, community and place.

JF: You’ve chosen a very local focus for your enterprise, working on Martha’s Vineyard almost exclusively. Is that just a business decision for you or something more?

JA: It’s a commitment to place. This is the place that we know—after 30 years we are beginning to understand the landscape, the climate, the people, the politics and the culture. This is the place where the people in our company have chosen to raise their families. We are dedicated to a long term effort to do what we can to make this small place the best place it can be, for now and for future generations, and to make models that others will hopefully find useful. So, is it a business decision or something more? The answer is yes, it’s both.

JF: What first inspired you to make this commitment to place and to “the business of place,” as you describe it in your book?

JA: We have always had the same commitment to some degree. But during the nineties we had a partnership which involved substantial work off the island. It felt disconnected and fragmented—we were spread out and doing work in places we neither knew or understood. We sensed that if we put all our eggs in one basket we could make a significant impact. At that time we made the covenant, as a business, to limit our work to this region, with the exception of whatever educational work we are able to do beyond our shores.

JF: Your emphasis in your design/build work on the “spirit of craft” goes against the prevailing tide of mass production exemplified by the Toll Brothers and other cookie-cutter home construction companies. Sadly, such craft is often a commodity available only to people with means. How do you make it available to the broader population?

JA: We do a mix of high end custom work and subsidized affordable housing, which is so desperately needed here. But we apply the same principles of craft and ecology to our affordable housing work. We believe that affordable housing should be no different from luxury housing, except smaller, less highly detailed and differently financed. If affordable housing is to be truly affordable, it must be durable, energy efficient and low maintenance.

JF: Do you think most planners and others involved in place-making think of their work as a “craft?”

JA: Most? No, I surely don’t. Some? Yes, indeed. Place-making, in my view, should derive from strong understanding and thoughtful integrative processes. I think there is an awakening sense in our fast-and-furious throwaway culture that craft and authenticity truly have value. 

JF: In your book you have a key chapter titled “Advancing People Conservation.” Why is this concept important and what role does land use planning play in it?

JA: People and land are the essential elements of community. To preserve community, we need to pay as much attention to people and culture as we do to land conservation—they are each critical components of a larger whole.

Land use planning, as a tool, is an opportunity to insist on the kind of community we want. By creating zoning mechanisms and using planning concepts that encourage traditional development patterns and townscapes, and that incentivize long term housing and agricultural affordability, we can create thriving local economies that serve the people who live there and keep the wealth close to home.

JF: On Martha’s Vineyard, you essentially convinced wealthy newcomers to subsidize affordable housing for lower income islanders. How did you pull that off?

JA: By painting a compelling picture, and good models, of a mosaic of small scale, scattered site, innovative housing solutions, we managed to change the way people think. Instead of “Oh no, affordable housing—that’s going to lower the quality of the community and reduce the value of my property” we started hearing, “THAT’S affordable housing? I can live with that. No problem.” And by devising programs like rental conversion (converting rental investment properties to long term affordable rental) and re-locating houses slated for demolition, we showed that affordable housing could be created without making “projects.”

JF: Do you think your place-based business model is replicable to other communities and regions? How might your approach to business and community development be scaled to larger communities?

JA: Our model is absolutely replicable. In almost all desirable places—resurgent cities, suburbs, college towns, state capitols, resort communities, etc.—the same circumstances prevail and the same issues beg for solutions. Businesses that share the wealth they create with those who are actually creating it, and balance community enhancement with profits, can succeed anywhere if the primary purpose of business is not constant growth and accumulation of wealth. It’s all about what you wish to accomplish.

JF: After reading your book, I thought, “why aren’t there more businesses out there operating this way?” So, why aren’t there?

JA: There are two answers to this question. The first is that there are more than we think. The second is that it must just be that not enough people know how exciting, rewarding and entirely doable it is, and our culture has adopted a winner-take-all model. But as Lily Tomlin says, “The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.”

Our business is not about somebody; it’s about everybody. It’s not about competition; it’s about collaboration. These run counter to our cultural norms, but I sense an elaborate web of wonderful experimentation stewing at the edges, slowly but steadily changing the chemistry of our customs and habits.