NW Democrat-Gazette

What people want

Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro. Dana D. Kelley

Opportunities for rural communities and small towns have never been greater.

But opportunity isn’t a gift, or a grant, or a free ride to a foregone conclusion. Opportunity implies the opposite of something already arrived; it’s the present possibility to obtain something in the future. The usual simile is a door or window, indicating potential passage to a new, superior status — if sufficient effort is expended.

In short, opportunity means work; but work with a good chance of success and reward.

So while small towns and rural communities currently have plenty of struggles (populations in decline, hospitals in distress, business districts in disrepair, etc.) they also have significant assets and benefits that spell opportunity.

In perhaps the most ironic unintended pun in bureaucratic vernacular, the main reason rural living is ripe with opportunity today is the same as the Census Bureau’s definition of “rural”: it’s anything that isn’t urban.

Urban challenges long predate the American Revolution and U.S. founding. Throughout human history, maladies of crime, disease, pollution, poverty and slums have accompanied the congestion of high population densities. Urbanized areas everywhere have eternally struggled with education, transportation, communication and public administration.

Nevertheless, dispel any utopian ideas of an American return to its agrarian roots. Metro areas are here to stay, and they will continue to grow in spite of their challenges.

But that’s precisely where the opportunity for nonurban locales lies. People move to big cities despite their dangers and problems, not because of them. Much of the time, they go urban for money: higher-paying jobs or career advancement.

The top reasons people move to smaller communities are nonfinancial: family connections or quality of life.

The good news is that small towns don’t need to slow the growth of big cities to become more prosperous. On the contrary, they should capitalize on complementing such growth. And the even better news is that the changing times will aid in that effort.

Consider technology’s diverse effects on rural and urban populations. City dwellers have always had superior access to goods and services, but expanding broadband across rural landscapes is an unprecedented equalizer.

Things that were once only available to those in proximity to urban boutiques can now be delivered in a day or two to rural households. From fashion to furniture to cosmetics and so much more, the internet has erased what used to be a major urban-rural divide in consumer product supply and sophisticated lifestyle comforts.

The fiber-optic transformation will be far more life-changing for rural areas. It will continue to create additional opportunities for remote employment in small towns, which delivers a powerful double whammy: better-than-local wages coupled with lower-than-urban costs of living.

There are a lot of people who want big-city pay but also small-town quality of life, and remote working is one way to achieve that. Commuting is another, and again technology is disproportionately aiding small towns in that regard with better roadways and more advanced automobiles.

Especially today, anyone living in a major city is constantly conditioned to accept longer, more difficult drives. A 30-minute commute across a city might only traverse a dozen miles as the crow flies, and be very stressful dealing with backed-up traffic in one moment and daredevil darting speeders the next.

A 30-minute commute to a regional hub like Jonesboro from a surrounding small town is a completely different, easy-drive experience. It’s low-volume traffic on four-lane roads, covering more than a mile a minute; perfect for cruise control and an audiobook.

Another dynamic benefiting small towns is their ability to change quickly, in order to become a better place for attracting new residents. Adding a park, or more sidewalks, or a walking or bike trail can happen faster. Huge cities are like huge corporations; they turn like battleships, and every good idea and initiative must jump through a plethora of hoops for approval, and more still for implementation.

In many aspects, what people want is already what small towns already have to some degree: safety on streets and in schools, affordability in housing and living, access to nature. Small towns that pull together with vision, drive and commitment can further develop those things in spades.

Becoming a “Great Place to Raise Kids” is much easier for little towns than crowded cities, and there’s a sizable segment of the population looking for that very thing.

Ultimately, life is a series of tradeoffs. There will always be those millions for whom the material benefits of urbanization outweigh its risks. But the number of people who are beginning to prioritize safety and other intangibles is growing, and is large enough to propel a lot of rural areas to prosperity. Thanks to technology, previous disadvantages of rural life — isolation, primitive conditions, etc. — are rapidly diminishing.

There’s another thing, too. Ugly partisan politics plays out most prominently on urban stages, which is where money and power is centered. This moment can be a great rallying cry for small towns to step up and demonstrate a renewal of Yankee ingenuity as a reminder that the pursuit of happiness happens locally.

Local Main Streets and Chambers, America needs you.

Voices

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2023-06-02T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-06-02T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://edition.nwaonline.com/article/282132115830220

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