As far as settings go, a Dying Town is great if someone wants to tell a story with a bleak tone, especially if it involves either escaping from or attempting to revive said town. Most works that feature one will at least have a line or two of dialog mentioning the reason that the town is dying is due to some form of economic decline, typically in the form of a business or industry which employed a large amount of the population abruptly closing, natural resources drying up, or a myriad of other factors; this was pivotal for the community, and now that it’s gone, everyone is suffering.
Essentially, when a Pivotal Business shuts down, the town's economic failure is all but assured. However, there is a flip side to this: more modern works will sometimes feature a Pivotal Business as a bad thing, particularly if it's moving into a town and trying to impose itself as the primary economic force, in which case the efforts of the protagonists are focused on closing it down and minimizing economic and environmental damage.
The most common examples of a Pivotal Business in fiction are typically:
- Resource Extraction: Natural resource extraction was once a highly profitable business, to the point where a large part of modern labor laws were born in reaction to the Abusive Workplaces that mines often were, ranging from not paying workers in actual currency to massive amounts of deaths from workplace accidents. However, such businesses inevitably come to an end when all of the accessible material has been worked out and no way was found (or even considered) to replenish or replace it, or it becomes cheaper to import it from regions with lower labor costs or easier geology. Additionally, demand for materials such as fossil fuels or hardwoods may decline due to technological advances and and/or concerns about damaging the environment, leaving communities with nothing else to fall back on (and, potentially, unpleasant and expensive hazardous waste issues). More modern works will sometimes portray these as a Toxic, Inc., and display their closure as a net positive.
- Mills: "Mill" is often just synonymous with "Factory" (i.e. a "steel mill" or "cotton mill") but in fiction, a Pivotal Business that causes a Dying Town to form will often just be referred to as "a mill", even if the reference is somewhat anachronistic.
- Tourism: The municipality was once a tourist boom town, but that's no longer the case. Maybe a major tourist attraction closed down, or maybe a highway was built that means it's now quicker to go around the city than through it. In works with a more supernatural bent, perhaps the town has become associated with being 'Haunted', and tourism dollars have dried up because of that. Such a town is, naturally, easily susceptible to a Tourism-Derailing Event.
- Big Box Stores: Almost universally an example of the type of Pivotal Business which the protagonists are working against, stores such as Wal-Mart or Target are known for moving into communities and siphoning away money from smaller businesses, while simultaneously making themselves the largest employers in the area.
There is, naturally, Truth in Television to this; some older coal mining towns in Europe were already declining before the Second World War due to the veins being worked out. In the USA from the 1950s on, this phenomenon led to the formation of the "Rust Belt" in the Midwest, so-called because of the vast amount of industrial plants, particularly steel mills, that have been abandoned and left to rust. Successive recessions in the late 20th and early 21st centuries led to further business failures and town declines.
Has overlap with the Only Shop in Town. Compare with One-Product Planet, where a planet is known for a single product or industry. Often these are keeping Company Towns afloat by definition, often in conjunction with resource extraction. Those who run these have a good chance of becoming a Small-Town Tyrant with shades of I Own This Town.
Examples:
- The Best Case Scenario, if you're being "realistic": Large-scale country-wide example. Because of the systemic corruption of the HPSC, they spent decades making Japan's economy rely on the heroics industry to function at all. Japan's parliament deciding to dissolve heroes in response to the systemic corruption and integrate them into the other emergency services causes significant economic turmoil.
- Cars 1: Radiator Springs was once a thriving stop on Route 66, until a freeway, which the inhabitants hoped would bring more traffic, instead bypassed the town entirely, cutting off its lifeline. At the end, Lighting McQueen, after the Character Development he got from getting stranded there, set up his headquarters in the town, promising to bring tourists back again.
- Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: Somewhat Played for Laughs, but part of the reason that Flint Lockwood attempts to invent a device to create food from water is because his hometown of Swallow Falls is suffering due to its primary industry — fishing for and canning sardines — drying up because the world collectively realized that "sardines are super gross", forcing the town to subsist primarily on a surplus of sardines on top of that.
- Wendell & Wild: The town of Rust Bank was originally supported by a root beer brewery owned by Kat's parents. After their deaths, it ended up burning down (resulting in the deaths of all its workers), and as a result the town is mostly deserted and resisting the control of the Klaxons in the present. It ultimately turns out that the Klaxons themselves started the fire; after their victims are brought back from the dead to testify against them, they end up arrested. Afterwards, Kat's precognitive abilities indicate that the town will have a brighter future ahead of it.
- Eight Legged Freaks: Silver mines petering out have badly hurt the town, with the son of the old mine owner trying to find a new vein and the mayor engaging in one Get-Rich-Quick Scheme after another to turn things around.
- Big Business (1988): Jupiter Hollow has spent decades as a Company Town where everyone works at a furniture factory and the townspeople are in a desperate fight to keep the town from being closed down and leaving them destitute.
- Brassed Off: The colliery is the main cohesive business in the town, and if it closes, will almost certainly result in a Dying Town.
- Buried On Sunday: The Canadian government canceling all the fishing licenses in Solomon Gundy outrages the townspeople and eventually drives them to secession.
- The Grand Seduction: Tickle Cove is a once grand fishing village that has lost its pride and much of its population after government quotas kept the residents from fishing enough to stay profitable, and they are desperate to bring new industries into the town.
- Heart of Glass: A village heavily dependent on glassblowing descends into chaos when their master craftsman dies without revealing the secret of the process that let him make the glass that all of their best customers want.
- Jumanji takes place in Brantford, New Hampshire, a town that relies heavily on the Parrish Shoe Company to provide jobs and keep its economy afloat. When Alan was sucked into Jumanji and went missing, his father and CEO of the company Sam devoted all his time and money to finding his boy, effectively abandoning the company in order to do so. By the time Alan returns after 26 years in the jungle, Sam has passed on, the company has gone belly-up, and the entire town is failing and overrun with hobos. When they win the game and the timeline is restored, the Parrish Shoe Company lives on instead and the entire town is thriving.
- The Odd Life of Timothy Green: Pencils, of all things, sustain Stanleyville, the "Pencil Capital of the World". Jim Green works for a pencil factory, his wife Cindy is a tour guide at a pencil museum, and even the youth soccer team is named "The Erasers". A good part of the conflict later in the film is attempting to prevent the pencil factory from shutting down, and taking the town with it.
- In Pottersville, the old mill closed down some time before the film starts, leaving it in an economic slump; Meynard Greiger, the owner of the town's only general store, is allowing citizens to buy things on credit he keeps track of in a ledger. The town begins having an economic boom after Meynard, believing that his wife's interest in the Furry Fandom is her having an affair, dresses up as a gorilla while on a drunken bender and causes a bigfoot scare around Christmas.
- Tommy Boy: Callahan Auto Parts is this for Sandusky, Ohio, as all of the town's other industrial plants were shut down during the time Tommy was away at college. As "Big" Tom Callahan dies shortly after the business begins expanding into producing brake pads, there's worry about whether the company can survive with the ditzy son Tommy trying to follow in his footsteps and keep the town afloat.
- 1632: In multiple books, such as The Tangled Web and The Sovereign States, the protagonists blood a bloody siege at an important Evil Reactionary-led town on a vital trade route by building a new route that cuts out the old town and renders it irrelevant (although they do feel bad for the townspeople this will bankrupt in the earlier book).
- An Abundance of Katherines: The textile factory that manufactures and sells tampon strings is the only business that brings money into Gunshot. It's also not actually selling the strings anymore - they lost all their buyers, but the woman running it didn't have the heart to tell the workers that, so she's simply been disposing of the product and waiting for money to run out and the town to die anyway.
- All the Wrong Questions: Stain'd-by-the-Sea's primary industry involved harvesting ink from octopi; when their population started declining, Ink Inc., the largest business in town, tried to drain the nearby waters to get at the remaining population... which just killed off the rest of the octopi, and the town has been suffering ever since.
- Bob Lee Swagger: Pascagoula, Mississippi from Pale Horse Coming has been shrinking since the end of World War II reduced the need for its shipbuilding industries and the townspeople are excited at a chance to make up for that loss by shifting their efforts into a company building watertight coffins to withstand floods.
- The Hardy Boys: Morgan's Quarry in End of the Trail first depended on stonecutting and then on an illegal gambling casino for a source of revenue, but the quarry has seen better days and the casino lost its customers when gambling was legalized in more convenient locales like Atlantic City.
- Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?: The city of Orario revolves entirely around the Mega Dungeon at its center, with multiple adventure guilds delving its depths for treasure and natural resources which are then fashioned into products by the city's craftsmen.
- Jaws: Mayor Vaughan claims the beaches need to kept open, despite the shark attacks, in order to keep tourism up; however, in reality, Vaughan is keeping them open to preserve the real estate value, due to him having ties to the mafia and needing to keep property valuable to keep them happy.
- The Kept Man of the Princess Knight: Life in Grey Neighbor revolves almost entirely around the Millennium of Midnight Sun, the Mega Dungeon whose entrance is at the center of town. If you're not an adventurer yourself, your job probably supports them in one way or another. It's mentioned there used to be a lot more such cities in the setting, but the other dungeons have all been conquered and their cores captured, shutting off the supply of wealth from the depths.
- Louis L'Amour does this a few times.
- Kiowa Trail features a town that depends on revenue from cowboys passing through town but also treats those cowboys like dirt and eventually kills the brother of a ranch owner, who retaliates by blocking off the road into town and building another town nearby to rob them of all their income sources.
- The High Graders features a town where mining has supplanted ranching and led to a Gray-and-Gray Morality struggle (with a few outright villains stirring things up). While the ranchers are fighting to hang onto their prosperity or drive out the miners, they fail, and the epilogue reveals that the town failed once the mines emptied out without the ranches there to pick up the slack anymore.
- The Lost Fleet: Many Syndicate star systems are dying communities with little industry or military defense due to only being settled as stopovers for ships jumping from one star system to the next, only to be bypassed by the hypernet gate that allows faster travel over greater distances with no stops.
- The Peripheral: The only reason Flynne's hometown still has an economy at all is that it is a conveniently remote place to 3D-print illegal drugs, as overseen by The Don and local Small-Town Tyrant Corbell Pickett. The fact that Flynne's family and their friends refuse to have anything to do with the drug business explains their poor economic circumstances at the start of the novel (Flynne's mom, for instance, cannot afford medicine, despite Flynne's brother's full military pension).
- Reign of the Seven Spellblades: The town of Galatea is situated between two of the top Wizarding Schools in the Union, Kimberly Magic Academy (the main setting of the series) and Featherston Sorcery School, and though Thug Dojo Kimberly claims it's "their" town, the residents rely a lot on the business of visiting students, alumni, and staff from both schools.
- Rocket Boys: Coalwood is already a Dying Town, but the only thing really keeping it afloat is the local coal mine that nearly all the men in town are employed at. Homer mentions in the epilogue that once the mine dries up in the late fifties, Coalwood basically ceases to exist.
- Shady Hollow: Reginald von Beaverpelt's sawmill is the biggest employer in Shady Hollow, when Reg is murdered there's concerns for the future of the town. Fortunately his widow puts his competent secretary in charge.
- Bones: An episode revolves around a small town in Appalachia that used to be on a scenic route, until a nearby bridge was condemned as unsafe, forcing tourists to take a lengthy detour and sending the town into an economic tailspin. At the end of the episode, Bones donates the advance from her latest novel to pay to replace the bridge.
- Leverage: The Season 5 episode "The Low Low Price Job" focuses on the team trying to shut down a Value!More store that has moved into the small town of Apple Springs, Oregon and tried to make itself one of these. Nate actually tries to dissuade Eliot from taking the job, as the corporation that runs Value!More are far above the punching weight of a five-person team of con artists and thieves, but Eliot convinces Nate to just shut down this particular store before it can become a Pivotal Business in full and wreck a small town's economy.
- Midnight Mass: Crockett Island's primary economic force used to be fishing; however, an oil spill destroyed the industry, and the town's economy is in such shambles, people don't even try to sell their homes anymore, leaving them abandoned when they move away.
- Much of Petticoat Junction is spent trying to keep the railroad from shutting down an unprofitable line that is responsible for tourists and freight shipping necessary to keep Hooterville in general and the Shady Rest Hotel in particular prosperous.
- A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017): Exaggerated. Due to a Pragmatic Adaptation, all of Paltryviille from The Miserable Mill burned down at some point in the past, except for the titular Lucky Smells Lumbermill and Dr. Orwell's optometry clinic. The former employs, and houses, basically everyone still in Paltryville, where they're fed chewing gum and paid in coupons.
- True Detective: The fourth season, Night Country, features Silver Sky Mining as supporting the town of Ennis, Alaska. It's clearly a Toxic, Inc., whose unregulated pollution is responsible for several deaths among the native population of the town, but people are asked to turn a blind eye because it employs half of Ennis. Part of the reason that the Inciting Incident at Tsalal station happens is that the researchers there were helping to cover up the true extent of the mine's pollution.
- Alan Wake II:
- Bright Falls, Washington relied on tourism to support itself; however, after the disappearances at Cauldron Lake thirteen years previously, the town has gained a reputation for being haunted, and very few people want to come there anymore. The final nail in the coffin happened when the Federal Bureau of Control cordoned off the Lake for its own purposes, and now, nobody can go there even if they want to.
- The nearby town of Watery used to have a lumber mill as its main economic driver; now, it's being kept on life support by business at Coffee World, a Crappy Carnival where half of the attractions are made out of plywood, all of the restrooms are out of order, and which accidentally killed its mascot with a caffeine overdose.
- Fallout 2: The town of Broken Hills is built around a uranium mine to support the nuclear power plants that various communities in the game use. Since it's a vital resource, the presence of the mine is portrayed as a good thing, and if the Chosen One choose to help the town the epilogue notes that the town thrives in subsequent years... right up until the mine runs empty. Then the town is reduced to "a few stubborn homesteaders left scraping out a miserable existence."
- Life Is Strange: True Colors: The Typhon mining company is the largest employer in Haven Springs, mining uranium from the mountains surrounding the town. Notably, this is presented as a negative: Typhon are responsible for Gabe's death when they proceed with an explosion despite Ryan having asked them to hold off while Ethan is being rescued, and they are shown to use their significant power in the town to bury the case, trying to buy Charlotte off and intimidating Pike; they also blackmailed Jed with the knowledge of his mistake that led to the deaths of several miners (including John Chen). It turns out to have been subverted in the ending after their activities are exposed: when Typhon leaves the town in the aftermath of the council meeting, the town remains thriving.
- Night in the Woods: Possum Springs used to be a mining town, but after the mines closed, the city can't even afford to erect a cell tower in order to get service in the area. Not helping matters is the fact that the mines might have released a hallucinogenic gas which caused the townsfolk to see weird things, assuming there's no supernatural element.
- Persona 4: Junes, a big box store that moved into Inaba, has become this. Residents blame Junes for the economic decline of Inaba, and certain people who work at Junes — such as Yosuke and Saki— are treated as if they're part of the problem when they're just trying to earn a living.
- Stardew Valley:
- The player character arrives at Pelican Town in the aftermath of the opening of a JojaMart, which has caused the decline of the local mom-and-pop shop and the abandonment of the town's community centre. The official prequel comic book goes into more detail on this, showing how the arrival of the JojaMart decimated the local economy and damaged the environment. The player then has the choice of helping the nature spirits restore the community center or siding with Joja Corporation to turn it into a warehouse.
- Stardew Valley Expanded: Siding with Joja will effectively turn Pelican Town into a Joja Corp's Company Town and the JojaMart's manager, Morris, becomes Pelican Town's new mayor.
- The Simpsons:
- "Coming To Homerica": Ogdenville's entire economy was based upon their barley crop. Following some tainted barley making its way into Krusty Burgers and causing a mass food poisoning incident (and the farm overseer foolishly admits in an interview they have no way of ensuring it doesn't happen again), the bottom falls out of the market and the entire town is left out of work, forcing them to move to Springfield in search of employment.
- Whilst it fluctuates, the Springfield Nuclear Plant is often portrayed as this for Springfield, with it being the largest source of employment and the source of its electricity (to the point Burns can plunge the whole town into darkness on a mere whim), thus episodes that involve it in jeopardy usually carry the danger of ruining the town's economy and leaving to many people out of work. Its partially down to this (partially down to his absurd wealth) that Mr Burns is so powerful and able to get away with breaking the law so casually.
- South Park: In the episode "Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes", a "Wall-Mart" moves into South Park, and causes the downtown to become abandoned due to everyone shopping at the store that sells everything. This being South Park, the Wall-Mart is, of course, an Eldritch Abomination which needs to be slain to save the town.
