Age Estimates Show Rural Communities Short of Younger Workers, According to a U.Va. Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service Study

This article leads me to an aside:

How do you keep them "down on the farm", or even the Warrentons of the Commonwealth? Not that this is a problem unique to Virginia, as Wisconsin's leaders have expressed worry over a state-wide "brain drain".

The answer isn't simple, and I for one left for Dallas straight out of college myself, albiet I was assigned to Dallas when I could have just as easily wound up in Allentown, PA; NoVA, Hillsboro, TX; or near Ft. Campbell, KY.

If anything, I would think that the expansion of Internet culture and the franchisation of America makes it easier to search out fun and happening places in Middle America, but you can't exactly replicate the SoHo loft experience in a two grain-elevator town or the "livable" exurbs or your one-stoplight county seats. I'd think that Americorps and Teach for America touches upon some places within Appalachia, but the talented young men and women they pick can't all be in the country.

Of course, if someone can create "Rural Bohemia", it would provide some intriguing socioeconomic possibilities, not to mention providing a shot in the arm for some of the communities my old firm in Paris represented. All that being said, I didn't exactly set a good example since I gladly traded Fannin County, Texas for Brookfield.

Labels: amateur sociology, asides, land patterns, Rural Bohemia, Virginia, Wisconsin