When I was a child I used to visit relatives in a small southern town. Our family came to the area specifically for its natural qualities after my great-grandfather established a winter retreat there in the early 1900s. Generations passed and eventually one grandson stayed and lived there full-time starting in the 1940s. Over the years, he was joined by a sprinkling of cousins all drawn by small town charm, water, and wildlife. Hence it has become a holiday magnet of the rest of us.

Sometime during this period the town acquired another resident: A paper mill. Ever since, the air was filled with a perpetual haze that turned copper wire window screens a dark shade of oxidized brown-black. And the smell…the smell was horrendous and it permeated the entire being of the small coastal town. When visitors would happen on the place and asked about the odor, the locals would answer wistfully: “Ah, that’s the smell of money being made.” (The answer they had been “sold” when the mill came to town.)

Nearly a half century later, the river is tainted with dioxin and other chemicals, the fish and shrimp greatly diminished, and the town is hustling for tourist dollars. Now, the old saw is not repeated much. The current refrain is more likely to be that the smell is more barnyard like or the bad breath of industry.

Just as Joe Laur pointed out in his excellent post on BP and his relationship with the oil giant, things change and perceptions are altered. What was once your friend and companion can morph to enemy and poison. For Joe it was BP and for me it was Mobil. That’s where I got my first credit card. I even got one of my all-time favorite dogs from the Mobil mechanic and my first new wheat penny from Kenny who owned the Flying “A” station that became Mobil and was eventually gobbled up by Exxon. Then the Valdez changed things. And that is the image I see, not the dog, the penny, or Kenny.

And when these commercial and community interrelationships fail, there is a great sense of loss. Folks go through the same sort of pain as when they divorce or otherwise drift apart from once-loved ones. But this is not always the case, because there are certainly long lasting and fruitful synergies between businesses and communities with mutual and seemingly perpetual enrichment. It is a complicated world out there, so how does a community or person know which are the best businesses with which to walk joyfully down the economic aisle alongside?

Part of the answer comes from a 1996 book by University of Montana economist Thomas Powers called Lost Landscapes and Failed Economics: the Search for a Value of Place. Dr. Powers’ work suggests that wham-bam extractive industries—like BP—do not make the best and most lasting mates in this context. And experience shows us via ghost towns and the current BP spill that these are “get in quick, exploit the resource, and move on” sorts of folks who certainly cause a flurry when they are there, but generally leave without saying good-bye, cleaning up, or calling again. At best these extractive and exploitive industries are the one night stands we regret after the glow has passed and, at worst, they are the “Mr. Goodbars” we should not be seeking.

OK, we have bad examples galore, so what are the good? While I am not sure there is one exact model, I suspect your good community match is probably more “small box” than “big box.” The good catch is also very likely a member of BALLE—Business Alliance for Local Living Economies—or a similar sustainability organization like Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility , 1% for the Planet, or a partner on this website. And they might even be part of the B Corporations movement which is, according to their literature, “using the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.” These “good date” companies work hard to earn their reputations and build them with deeds rather than expensive advertizing campaigns.

These good finds and their employees also tend to be engaged or want to be engaged in the community in some direct manner other than lobbying against planning, health or environmental regulations or asking for massive move-in incentives from local coffers. What’s more, the eligible businesses usually have CEOs who are going to live in your community and make something significantly south of the usual 400 times the average employee wage we are seeing here in the US.

So the take home message here is that our search images for appropriate enterprises to bring home to our communities or embrace personally are likely changing from what we once thought worked for us or we had to settle for. Maybe we are getting smarter or less tolerant of being used, abused, and abandoned. But maybe, just maybe, we are maturing into and willing to pursue the visions expressed on Greenopolis.com or elsewhere in the sustainability ether. Hopefully that is true and let the visioning continue! (And you though this piece was going to be about office party hook ups.)