While not a Slow City by design, Floyd, pop. 434, embodies much of the ideology that the Italian founders of the Città Lente (slow city in Italian) movement have been trying to get small towns around the world to embrace since 1999.

The idea applies in particular to cities bypassed by globalization. Rather than rely on age-old ways to spur the economy — more development and tax breaks for businesses that create jobs — towns are encouraged to stay small and play on their cultural and environmental strengths. Try to create a sustainable community that contributes to social equity and protects the environment. Nurture local arts and history and the purveyors of locally grown foods. Appeal to a harried society's need to slow down and smell the roses rather than car exhaust...

Joel Kotkin, urban historian at New America, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, says many people are looking for neighborhoods and small towns and the opportunity to work from home or close to home but Slow City is unlikely to catch on in the USA.

"It's fine if you're in Europe and nobody has kids and you have shrinking cities," says Kotkin, author of The City. "How do you go slow when you're adding people? To achieve the virtues of a slow lifestyle, we need to do very radical things such as changing how work is distributed so people don't have to commute as much..."

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