For two hundred years the impact of the Industrial Revolution has taken its toll on our rural communities. As the agricultural industry has automated, fewer farmers feed the nation. Small towns that evolved to support the farming community with churches, schools, commerce, services etc. lost the critical mass necessary for these components to be delivered to townspeople and farmers alike ; the societal fabric failed as providers of these services failed.
Only regional centers are doing well as they attract employees and shoppers from their surrounding small towns. The question that arises is simple: If all small towns fail, are the regional centers viable on their own?
Today two percent of the population feeds the nation, and that 2 percent is losing access to services, to community, to their social support environment. For fundamental fairness, the urbanites should ensure that those that feed them have a sustainable community structure. While government subsidizes a variety of services to maintain some balance, that does not address the real problem. Like many other areas, we are addressing symptoms, not the core problem: Unsustainable demographics.
Metropolitan areas are beneficiaries of rural decline. The rural brain drain supports urban domination and weakens rural leadership capacity. Concentration of populace focuses government dollars to support programs and projects that rural populations cannot support. Property values are very imbalanced; the same house in a small town has about 25% of its suburban value. Yet ironically, urban development is trying to create that “small town feeling” even as urban apathy allows existing small towns to disappear.
Congestion, pollution, time loss, crime and other urban concerns have many yearning to return to rural America: less congestion, less stress, cheaper cost of living. All one has to do is watch the Friday night traffic heading north all summer.
On the other hand, people far and wide delight in access to the Metro’s professional sports teams, expanded arts offerings, top end health services, etc.
Integrating urban and rural economies through use of telecommunications solves urban congestion, reduces urban subsidies supporting density and at the same time allows repopulation of small-town America and reduces subsidies due to population scarcity. Empowering individuals to live where they choose and allowing them to rely upon online services expands personal freedoms while rebalancing demographics- which is the real task at hand.
Having grown up in a small town in Northern Minnesota and then spending 40+ years in the computer industry, I fully endorse John Sanger’s efforts to integrate rural and urban areas. I fully believe that moving in this direction represents a systems thinking type of solution ambitious enough to make a real difference.
Who are the audiences that can fight for restoring our small towns? Who can take initiative to save small town quality of life before it disappears? Who will demand the family of integrated services needed to sustain them? How can we meld the flood of boomer retirees with the surge of refugees and the need for our businesses to attract a workforce into a solution that restores the beauty and wonder of our small towns while enhancing urban quality of life? This is conversation we want to have.