You describe exactly what I’ve done. I run a successful online business with clients all over the country, and I’ve chosen to use the financial success to buy land and build in a depressed, rural place in North Country and plan on helping build this place—attracting the right kind of settlers with the financial ability and desire to make this next 100 years in rural communities be the golden years. Your essay describes it all so perfectly. Thank you.
Your writing completely does that—and has inspired me to think of things I can do to further the movement. It’s been great seeing your story from afar!
The hippie movement started as a rejection of the suburbs and a “return to the land” of sorts by baby boomers. It was hijacked and diverted into sex and drugs. Zoomers are now the 4th suburban generation. And suburbs were always a form of social engineering.
Chesterton wrote:
I still hold... that the suburbs ought to be either glorified by romance and religion or else destroyed by fire from heaven, or even by firebrands from the earth.
As this “Fourth Turning” continues to unfold in America, I think it will be the latter.
I’d like to know how much immigration has increased rural population over the last 30 to 40 years and how much is being done to attract immigrants to rural areas. That was the model in many areas in the past, both rural and urban.
More than 1 million immigrants moved to rural counties since 1990. Mostly Hispanic to rural California, the Southwest, and Texas which makes sense. Most international migrants still wind up in cities. But rural people from different countries often have more in common than they do with urbanites in their own countries.
Great article. I just read Jane Jacobs’ Cities and the Wealth of Nations and she talks about the importance of city regions for economic development. She talks about how small towns and rural areas that are tied to a dynamic city benefit by being able to blend city work with rural production. So rural areas don’t need to focus on monoculture cash crops and rural people can use income from city work to help supplement income from producing other rural products that might not otherwise be capable of sustaining the family just on their own. She wrote this in the 80s when city workers needed to live within commuting distance to the city. But today with “work from anywhere” I would imagine this model can work for the laptoppers who move to rural areas. It could be a good compromise.
I have not heard of that one. Though reading the jacket notes on Amazon, it does seem she is talking about nearly the same thing. I wonder how witnessing another 20 years of globalization changed her views before she died.
Thank you. What you point out about how rural population decline hasn’t been constant is important. There have been those times of growth too, and we could be living in one. Great research too.
What back to the land movements have lacked is generational continuity. People leave the city and their children leave the farm and the wheel keeps turning.
You describe exactly what I’ve done. I run a successful online business with clients all over the country, and I’ve chosen to use the financial success to buy land and build in a depressed, rural place in North Country and plan on helping build this place—attracting the right kind of settlers with the financial ability and desire to make this next 100 years in rural communities be the golden years. Your essay describes it all so perfectly. Thank you.
In some ways I hope my writing helps attract the right kind of people to my own community.
Your writing completely does that—and has inspired me to think of things I can do to further the movement. It’s been great seeing your story from afar!
The hippie movement started as a rejection of the suburbs and a “return to the land” of sorts by baby boomers. It was hijacked and diverted into sex and drugs. Zoomers are now the 4th suburban generation. And suburbs were always a form of social engineering.
Chesterton wrote:
I still hold... that the suburbs ought to be either glorified by romance and religion or else destroyed by fire from heaven, or even by firebrands from the earth.
As this “Fourth Turning” continues to unfold in America, I think it will be the latter.
I have nothing against suburbs. I grew up in one. Just endless suburbs.
I’d like to know how much immigration has increased rural population over the last 30 to 40 years and how much is being done to attract immigrants to rural areas. That was the model in many areas in the past, both rural and urban.
More than 1 million immigrants moved to rural counties since 1990. Mostly Hispanic to rural California, the Southwest, and Texas which makes sense. Most international migrants still wind up in cities. But rural people from different countries often have more in common than they do with urbanites in their own countries.
Great article. I just read Jane Jacobs’ Cities and the Wealth of Nations and she talks about the importance of city regions for economic development. She talks about how small towns and rural areas that are tied to a dynamic city benefit by being able to blend city work with rural production. So rural areas don’t need to focus on monoculture cash crops and rural people can use income from city work to help supplement income from producing other rural products that might not otherwise be capable of sustaining the family just on their own. She wrote this in the 80s when city workers needed to live within commuting distance to the city. But today with “work from anywhere” I would imagine this model can work for the laptoppers who move to rural areas. It could be a good compromise.
I have not heard of that one. Though reading the jacket notes on Amazon, it does seem she is talking about nearly the same thing. I wonder how witnessing another 20 years of globalization changed her views before she died.
That was my question too! So I wrote on that a couple days ago on Substack.
Thank you. What you point out about how rural population decline hasn’t been constant is important. There have been those times of growth too, and we could be living in one. Great research too.
What back to the land movements have lacked is generational continuity. People leave the city and their children leave the farm and the wheel keeps turning.
Great point.