"Rural America is as varied and nuanced as the landscape it inhabits," the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire says in touting its new report, based on telephone polling of 8,000 Americans in 19 rural counties. The report "identifies four distinct, often disparate, rural Americas," Carsey says:
· Amenity-rich areas that draw vacationers, retirees, and second home-owners with their mountains, lakes, coastlines, or forests.
· Declining resource-dependent areas that once thrived on agriculture, timber, mining and manufacturing industries which, threatened by globalization and resource depletion, no longer support a vibrant middle-class population.
· Chronically poor regions where residents and the land have suffered decades of resource depletion and under-investment.
· A transitional type of locale, characterized by amenity-driven growth and resource-based decline. While traditional resource-based economies in these areas have weakened, these transitional regions show potential for amenity-driven growth.
The report surveyed residents in amenity-rich Park and Chaffee counties in Colorado; Jewell, Osborne, Republic and Smith counties "in the declining heartland of Kansas;" Harlan and Letcher counties in southeastern Kentucky; Coahoma, Tunica and Quitman counties in the Mississippi Delta; Choctaw, Clarke, Marengo and Wilcox counties in Alabama's Black Belt; Clatsop County in Oregon and Pacific County in Washington, both on the Pacific coast; and Coos County, N.H., and Oxford County, Maine, "in the Northern Forest."
Journalists in those localities and states may find interesting some poll questions that get at tough issues, such as "For the future of your community, do you think it is more important to use natural resources to create jobs, or to conserve natural resources for future generations?" In three of the four major types of areas, conservation was preferred; not so in chronic-poverty areas, where 38 percent chose using resources, 37 percent chose conservation and 25 percent volunteered that they were equal, that there should be a balance, or a similar reply.
The report says "Populations in all but the amenity-rich regions are aging, as young adults leave, older residents remain, and reproduction rates fall. Amenity-rich areas, on the other hand, are attracting both retiring boomers and young professional families. The natural environment is a significant, although varied, force on rural America, attracting residents to amenity-rich areas and leading to their departure from declining areas where natural resources have been depleted and economic shifts have diminished employment opportunities." Drugs and crime are the chief concerns in persistently poor places, population decline is most worrisome in the declining-resource Heartland, and growth and sprawl are the top concern in high-amenity areas.
For a PDF of the report, click here. For a video of Carsey Institute Director Cynthia "Mil" Duncan describing the “four rural Americas” concept, go here. She wrote the report, "Place Matters: Challenges and Opportunities in Four Rural Americas," with Carsey senior fellow and UNH professor of sociology Larry Hamilton, writer Leslie Hamilton, and Chris Colocousis, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at UNH.
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