Gratitude, Small Business Saturday, and the Soul of a Community

By J. David Chapman, November 26, 2025

Thanksgiving is a season built around two simple ideas: gratitude and gathering. We gather around tables, around traditions, and around the people and places that shape our daily lives. This year, as I reflect on what I’m thankful for, my mind keeps returning to something that may seem small at first, but is anything but small in the life of a city. I’m thankful for small businesses.

In subURBAN!, I write that the urban fabric of any community is not woven by grand master plans or massive developments alone. Instead, it is stitched together by the storefronts, cafés, bookstores, breweries, art studios, barbershops, and cafes that give downtowns their energy: those “everyday third places” that turn streets into destinations and neighbors into friends. These are the places that teach us what it feels like to belong.

Small businesses do something large-scale development can’t do on its own: they create life between the buildings. When you step inside a local bookstore, chat with a barista who knows your order, or watch kids wander between the shelves after school, you’re not just supporting a business, you’re strengthening the social infrastructure that gives a city its identity. You’re fueling the economy at its most local level, where dollars recirculate, jobs are created, and neighborhoods come alive. You’re affirming what so many cities have lost in the age of sprawl: a sense of place.

This Saturday is Small Business Saturday, and downtown Edmond will be full of that life-giving energy. I’m especially excited to be part of it in a very personal way. Best of Books, one of Edmond’s most cherished independent bookstores, is hosting a special Small Business Saturday book signing event, and I’ll be there signing copies of subURBAN! from 1 to 2pm.

Standing behind a table at a bookstore, meeting neighbors, talking about cities, community, and downtown vibrancy, it all feels like the perfect culmination of what subURBAN! is about. The book argues that suburban downtowns can become urban oases not by trying to be the next big city, but by doubling down on the human-scale experiences that small businesses cultivate.

When I talk about walkability, energy on the street, or the “dwell factor,” I’m really talking about what happens when people have reasons to linger. Small businesses create those reasons. They give us places to bump into each other, to browse, to sit, to stroll, and to participate in the life of our city. A place like Best of Books isn’t merely a shop, it’s an anchor, a cultural touchstone, a memory-maker for kids and adults alike.

In Edmond, we’re fortunate. We have a downtown filled with entrepreneurs who invest not just their capital, but their hearts. They host events, stay late for art walks, sponsor local programs, and say yes far more often than they say no. They carry the culture of our community on their shoulders. This Thanksgiving, I want to say thank you to them.

Thank you to the business owners who take risks.
Thank you to the artists and makers who choose local over easy.
Thank you to the cafés that open early, the shops that stay late, and the bookstores that remind us why physical spaces still matter.
Thank you to the residents who choose to shop local; not because it’s convenient, but because it’s meaningful.

As we move into the holiday season, I hope you’ll join me in celebrating the small businesses that make Edmond’s downtown vibrant, interesting, and alive. And if you’re out and about on Saturday, I’d love to see you at Best of Books. Bring a friend, buy a book (or a few), and take a moment to remember how lucky we are to live in a community where people still gather, still linger, and still believe in the power of local.

Small businesses aren’t small at all. They are, in many ways, the heartbeat of who we are. Happy Thanksgiving. I hope to see you Saturday.

Dr. J. David Chapman is the Chair of Finance and Professor of Real Estate at The University of Central Oklahoma & Author of subURBAN! (jchapman7@uco.edu)