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How will the Crash reshape Rural America
February 16th, 2009 by Mike Knutson
Richard Florida has written an outstanding analysis about America’s future. Titled “How the Crash will Reshape America,” it appeared in the March 2009 issue of The Atlantic. Florida, as most community development experts know, is an urban enthusiast who believes our economy is being driven by creative talent. Simply put, his theories argue that the places that succeed in attracting creative talent will thrive, while those who fail to attract creative talent will decline. Sadly, he doesn’t see much hope for rural places at succeeding in attracting talent, but that’s a story for another day.
Beyond encouraging everyone to read Florida’s article, I wanted to lift the following quote for people to think about:
“When a place gets boring, even the rich people leave.”
The quote is not from Florida. Rather Jane Jacobs, the great urban theorist, told it to Florida in an interview a few years ago. Florida believes places like New York City will survive the economic meltdown if for no other reason than they are interesting and attractive places to live. This of course, connects well with his theories about what attracts talented people.
Since Florida’s writing says little of rural, I think it’s appropriate for us to ask:
Will our post-crash rural communities be more interesting and exiting places to live?
Tags: creative economy, Jane Jacobs, Richard Florida
Posted in Community Development, In the News, Rural | Comments (
1 )
February 16th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
I think there are plenty of rural communities already more interesting and exciting than their urban counterparts. As Dr. Daryl Hobbs, the longtime University of Missouri sociologist, has noted, over recent decades American cities have become more and more uniform. There are young people, especially, who understand this. In the Black Hills I work daily with people in their 20s and 30s who have relocated from major cities, looking for something different. There are numbers backing up this trend: a 2002 Black Hills State University College of Business survery, involving 1,500 Black Hills area workers, found the region’s workforce to be six years younger than the national average. I haven’t done a survery, of course, but I know these Black Hills transpants and here’s how I would guess they’d define “interesting and exciting” — access to outdoor sports and recreation, opportunities to jump-start certain careers or become their own boss, opportunities for higher education, and chances to meet other like-minded young adults. What Richard Florida may not understand is that some of these people would define “community” not as Spearfish or Hot Springs, but as their tight band of fellow spelunkers or snowboarders or rock climbers (no one who has climbed to the top of a Needles spire with the help of his or her friends will say that their community is less interesting and exciting than New York City).
As for the post-crash era, rural America will offer the most affordable business sites for entrepreneurs, increasingly combined with distance communications systems equal to anything in urban areas. I think far-sighted communities will make good things happen locally.