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We keep hearing about how small towns are dying. However for much of the U.S. This is not the overall case. Overall which region do you think has the most successful group of small towns away from major metro areas and under 50k population. Just basing this off economic growth, population growth, tourism growth and how well the downtown area is kept up.
Regions have NOTHING to do with successful towns. In Washington state, it has been the policy of the state government to literally destroy the economy in areas outside the Seattle metro-area.
I lived in Idaho and worked quite a bit in Montana.
Montana. I don't think eastern Montana is depopulating. The oil shale boom changed all that.
BUT, really the mark of a successful community is NOT the luck of the draw. It is how the community deals with adversity. Southern Idaho has lots of successful communities. I am much less impressed with North Idaho.
Here is a link to a real story about a successful community in Idaho in North Idaho.
There's a lot of really well kept and prosperous small towns in the Upper Midwest/eastern Great Plains.
Rural Minnesota, northern 2/3rds of Iowa, much of rural Wisconsin, and the eastern half of the Dakotas and Nebraska have a lot of small towns - especially the county seat towns - that are maintaining their population bases and even growing in some cases. Especially ones that are commutable to larger small cities.
What's interesting is that you don't have to go very far from there to see some really significant rural decline. The southern part of Iowa, most of rural Missouri, rural Illinois and rural Indiana seem to be doing quite a bit worse by comparison.
The prosperity observed in the small towns of New England is not endogenous or homegrown, especially in New Hampshire and Vermont. If it wasn't for wealthy, part-time residents and yuppie tourists, many small towns in New England would be as prosperous as those in Pennsylvania or West Virginia. In fact, Vermont was one of the poorest states in the entire country before the advent of the interstate highway system. Because most of Maine is much farther away from Boston, Montreal, New York City, etc., its small towns have not experienced as much preservation and revitalization as those in New Hampshire, Vermont and western Massachusetts and, therefore, are good barometers of this phenomenon.
The prosperity observed in the small towns of New England is not endogenous or homegrown, especially in New Hampshire and Vermont. If it wasn't for wealthy, part-time residents and yuppie tourists, many small towns in New England would be as prosperous as those in Pennsylvania or West Virginia. In fact, Vermont was one of the poorest states in the entire country before the advent of the interstate highway system. Because most of Maine is much farther away from Boston, Montreal, New York City, etc., its small towns have not experienced as much preservation and revitalization as those in New Hampshire, Vermont and western Massachusetts and, therefore, are good barometers of this phenomenon.
I've heard, that when adjusted for cost of living, interior Maine is the poorest area in the country. It's a little like California in that the coastal smaller towns are relatively prosperous, but in my travels to the interior areaas of Maine, it's a different ball of wax.
I've heard, that when adjusted for cost of living, interior Maine is the poorest area in the country. It's a little like California in that the coastal smaller towns are relatively prosperous, but in my travels to the interior areaas of Maine, it's a different ball of wax.
I agree with you about California – the non-coastal parts of the state have some of the most eye-opening, shocking rural poverty I've personally ever seen in the US.
Despite having a large population and highly powerful state economy, California as a whole is actually astonishingly impoverished in rural areas.
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