Word: ruralization
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Abandoned homes? Usable yet worthless real estate? It sounds crazy at a time when house prices in most parts of the country are soaring and the Internet has allowed millions to set up virtual offices and Web-based businesses anywhere they like. But for vast stretches of rural America, this is cold reality. The kids moved away for college or work and never came back, and now the World War II generation that stabilizes so many small towns is fast reaching the limits of mortality. As town elders die, even their money flees, inherited by offspring who long ago headed...
...band of land-granting imitators has taken root from La Villa, Texas, to Chugwater, Wyo., to New Richland, Minn. Dozens of towns have some version of a land giveaway, and dozens more are considering it. "The giveaways worked once, after the Civil War," says David Darling, an expert in rural affairs at Kansas State University. "They have potential to work again...
...Rural America has been hemorrhaging population for decades, of course, with small towns trying--and failing--to reverse the outflow by wooing a big manufacturer with tax incentives. "That was the whole game--elephant hunting," says Anita Hoffhines, who heads economic development in Ellsworth. The new approach, known as "economic gardening," is to bring in people and let businesses follow. Not big businesses but shops and cafés that employ two or three people and that would slowly re-energize Main Street. It's a bit of a catch-22. With no jobs available, who will move there...
...diners and authentic flavor. I thought that bounty would just be before us. There would be fruits and vegetables everywhere. I expected family farms. I found just the opposite was true. The family farms were absolutely melting into the ground. They were disappearing, and the rural communities that depended on agriculture were boarded up and abandoned, because they had been bought out by agri-business...
...biggest political project had fallen apart during this same period. Throughout what eventually turned out to be four terms in the state legislature, he had championed government support for a series of public works to construct bridges, roads and canals so that people in rural areas could bring produce to market. He believed, he later said, that the "leading object" of government was to "lift artificial weights from all shoulders--to clear the path of laudable pursuit for all--to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life." When a depression hit the state...