In news and pop-culture narratives, rural America is often represented as a dismal place to live, but some studies show that most people in rural areas like where they live and feel hopeful about the future. And though 80-plus percent of Americans live in urban areas, 27% say they wish they lived in a rural area. That may be helping to fuel a population shift across the U.S., writes Sarah Smarsh in an op-ed for The New York Times. Smarsh is the author of rural Kansas memoir Heartland.
The nation's biggest cities, New York and Los Angeles, are losing population but cities in the South and the West are gaining population. Some rural areas are gaining, too, Smarsh notes, citing a study that found most rural Minnesota counties gained well-to-do early- and mid-career adults from 2000 to 2010, and only a third are returning to their hometowns; the rest are new to their new rural homes.
Many urban and suburban residents deeply miss their rural hometowns, Smarsh writes. In the year since Heartland was published, Smarsh said she has been approached by thousands of such people—a surprisingly diverse crowd—who spoke longingly of their rural roots and their desire to return. "These aren’t just white people lamenting the loss of the family wheat farm. They are black women missing their families in the rural South, Muslim women organizing workers in meatpacking towns on the plains, young gay men hoping to return to their small-town roots," Smarsh writes. "This is the rural America I know and love — a place rife with problems, yes, but containing diversity, vibrancy and cross-cultural camaraderie."
Smarsh is exploring this "shift in the zeitgeist" with a new podcast, The Homecomers, featuring rural and working class advocates from all over the country. "From where I sit, they are heroes of the American odyssey — seeing value where others see lack, returning with the elixir of hard-won social capital to help solve the troubles of home," Smarsh writes.
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