Fairfield, the Midwestern center of Transcendental Meditation, has been ranked number 7 in the list of “Best Small Towns in America 2013”.
The list is compiled by The Smithsonian Magazine and features US towns with population below 15,000 people. Successful candidates “have exceptional concentrations of museums, art galleries, orchestras, theaters, historic sites and other cultural blessings. The top towns also boast heart-warming settings where the air is a little fresher, the grass greener, the pace gentler than in metropolitan America.”
Fairfield, No 7
The magazine describes Fairfield, Iowa, in the following terms:
“The Maharishi University of Management now offers B.A.’s in 13 fields, among them Vedic science and sustainable living. With students riding bikes and plugged into iPods, it looks like any other college campus, except for twin gold-domed buildings where practitioners gather to meditate twice a day.
Fairfield could stand as a case study from The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida’s book on the link between educated populations and economic development. Fairfield got the one when the college opened its golden domes, drawing accomplished people who saw its sweetness; it got the other when they started dreaming up ways to stay. “Everyone who arrived had to reinvent themselves to survive,” said mayor (and meditator) Ed Malloy.”
Read the full story by Susan Spano
in The Smithsonian Magazine, April 2013
