Tag: rural development

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Are Any Small Towns Flourishing?

We hear and read how the very largest cities are growing, attractive places for millennials and just about anyone who is not of retirement age. The story is that the big cities have had almost all the economic gains of the last decade or so, while the economic life has been sucked out of small towns and rural areas.

The images above are what seem to be in many minds today — the vibrant big city versus the dying countryside.

Yet, we are in a digital age when everyone is connected to everyone else on the globe, thanks to the Internet. Why hasn’t this theory of economic potential from the Internet been true for the countryside?

Well, it turns out that it is true. Those rural areas that do in fact have widespread access to the Internet are flourishing. These towns with broadband are exemplary, but unfortunately not the majority of towns.

Professor Roberto Gallardo of Purdue’s Purdue Center for Regional Development has dug deep into the data about broadband and growth. The results have recently been published in an article that Robert Bell and I helped write. You can see it below.

So, the implication of the image above is half right — this is a life-or-death issue for many small towns. The hopeful note is that those with broadband and the wisdom to use it for quality of life will not die in this century.

© 2018 Norman Jacknis, All Rights Reserved

[This article is republished from the Daily Yonder , a non-profit media organization that specializes in rural trends and thus filling the vacuum of news coverage about the countryside.]

When It Comes to Broadband, Millennials Vote with Their Feet

By Roberto Gallardo — Robert Bell — Norman Jacknis

April 11, 2018

When they live in remote rural areas, millennials are more likely to reside in a county that has better digital access. The findings could indicate that the digital economy is helping decentralize the economy, not just clustering economic change in the cities that are already the largest.

Sources: USDA; Pew Research; US Census Bureau; Purdue Center for Regional Development This graph shows that the number of Millennials and Gen Xers living in the nation’s most rural counties is on the increase in counties with a low “digital divide index.” The graph splits the population in “noncore” (or rural) counties into three different generations. Then, within each generation, the graph looks at population change based on the Digital Divide Index. The index measures the digital divide using two sets of criteria, one that looks at the availability and adoption of broadband and another set that looks at socio-economic factors such as income and education levels that affect broadband use. Counties are split into five groups or quintiles based on the digital divide index, with group №1 (orange) having the most access and №5 (green) having the lowest.

Cities are the future and the countryside is doomed, as far as population growth, jobs, culture and lifestyle are concerned. Right?

Certainly, that is the mainstream view expressed by analysts at organizations such as Brookings. This type of analysis says the “clustering” of business that occurred during the industrial age will only accelerate as the digital economy takes hold. This argument says digital economies will only deepen and accelerate the competitive advantage that cities have always had in modern times.

But other pundits and researchers argue that the digital age will result in “decentralization” and a more level playing field between urban and rural. Digital technologies are insensitive to location and distance and potentially offer workers a much greater range of opportunities than ever before.

The real question is whether a rural decline is inevitable or if the digital economy has characteristics that are already starting to write a different story for rural America. We have recently completed research that suggests it is.

Millennial Trends

While metro areas still capture the majority of new jobs and population gains, there is some anecdotal evidence pointing in a different direction. Consider a CBS article that notes how, due to high housing costs, horrible traffic, and terrible work-life balances, Bend, Oregon, is seeing an influx of teleworkers from Silicon Valley. The New York Times has reported on the sudden influx of escapees from the Valley that is transforming Reno, Nevada — for good or ill, it is not yet clear.

Likewise, a Fortune article argued that “millennials are about to leave cities in droves” and the Telegraph mentioned “there is a great exodus going on from cities” in addition to Time magazine reporting that the millennial population of certain U.S. cities has peaked.

Why millennials? Well, dubbed the first digital-native generation, their migration patterns could indicate the beginning of a digital age-related decentralization.

An Age-Based Look at Population Patterns

In search of insight, we looked at population change among the three generations that make up the entire country’s workforce: millennials, generation X, and baby boomers.

First, we defined each generation. Table 1 shows the age ranges of each generation according to the Pew Research Center, both in 2010 and 2016, as well as the age categories used to measure each generation. While not an exact match, categories are consistent across years and geographies.

In addition to looking at generations, we used the Office of Management core-based typology to control by county type (metropolitan, small city [micropolitan], and rural [noncore]). To factor in the influence of digital access affects local economies, we used the Digital Divide Index. The DDI, developed by the Purdue Center for Regional Development, ranges from zero to 100. The higher the score, the higher the digital divide. There are two components to the Digital Divide Index: 1) broadband infrastructure/adoption and 2) socioeconomic characteristics known to affect technology adoption.

Looking at overall trends, it does look like the digital age is not having a decentralization effect. To the contrary, according to data from the economic modeling service Emsi, the U.S. added 19.4 million jobs between 2010 and 2016. Of these, 94.6 percent were located in metropolitan counties compared to only 1.6 percent in rural counties.

Population growth tells a similar story. Virtually the entire growth in U.S. population of 14.4 million between 2010 and 2016 occurred in metropolitan counties, according to the Census Bureau. The graph below (Figure 1) shows the total population change overall and by generation and county type. As expected, the number of baby boomers (far right side of the graph) is falling across all county types while millennials and generation x (middle two sets of bars) are growing only in metro counties.

But there is a different story. When looking at only rural counties (what the OMB classification system calls “noncore”) divided into five equal groups or quintiles based on their digital divide (1 = lowest divide while 5 = highest divide), the figure at the very top of this article shows that rural counties experienced an increase in millennials where the digital divide was lowest. (The millennial population grew by 2.3 percent in rural counties where the digital divide was the lowest.) Important to note is that this same pattern occurs in metropolitan and small city counties as well.

Impact on the “Really Rural” County

“Urban” and “rural” can be tricky terms when it comes to demographics. The Census Bureau reports that 80% of the population lives in urban areas. Seventy-five percent of those “urban” areas, however, are actually small towns with populations of under 20,000. They are often geographically large, with a population density that falls off rapidly once you leave the center of town.

On the other hand, some rural counties are adjacent to metro areas and may benefit disproportionately from their location or even be considered metropolitan due to their commuting patterns. Because of this, we turned to another typology developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service that groups counties into nine types ranging from large metro areas to medium size counties adjacent to metro areas to small counties not adjacent to metro areas.

Figure 3 (below) shows counties considered completely rural or with an urban population of less than 2,500, not adjacent to a metro area. Among these counties, about 420 in total, those with the lowest digital divide experienced a 13.5 percent increase in millennials between 2010 and 2016. In other words, in the nation’s “most rural” counties, the millennial population increased significantly when those counties had better broadband access.

Sources: USDA; Pew Research; US Census Bureau; Purdue Center for Regional Development. This graph shows population change by generation and “DDI” quintile in the nation’s most rural counties (rural counties that are farthest from metropolitan areas). In rural counties with the best digital access (a low digital divide index), the number of Millennials and Gen Xers increased.

The New Connected Countryside: A Work in Progress

To conclude, if you just look at overall numbers, our population seems to be behaving just like they did in the industrial age — moving to cities where jobs and people are concentrated. Rural areas that lag in broadband connectivity and digital literacy will continue to suffer from these old trends.

However, the digital age is young. Its full effects are still to be felt. Remember it took several decades for electricity or the automobile to revolutionize society. Besides, areas outside metro areas lag in broadband connectivity and digital literacy, limiting their potential to leverage the technology to affect their quality of life, potentially reversing migration trends.

Whether or not decentralization will take place remains to be seen. What is clear though is that (while other factors are having an impact, as well) any community attempting to retain or attract millennials need to address their digital divide, both in terms of broadband access and adoption/use.

In other words, our data analysis suggests that if a rural area has widely available and adopted broadband, it can start to successfully attract or retain millennials.

Roberto Gallardo is assistant director of the Purdue Center for Regional Development and a senior fellow at the Center for Rural Strategies, which publishes the Daily Yonder. Robert Bell is co-founder of the Intelligent Community Forum. Norman Jacknis is a senior fellow at the Intelligent Community Forum and on the faculty of Columbia University.

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A Virtual Metropolis Of The Countryside

I first wrote about this proposal two years ago. But I’m reposting it, since the idea is even more relevant now, as there has been further development of virtual communications – Skype and Google translators, more varieties of videoconferencing both in the cloud and through services like FaceTime, and even video through augmented reality devices, like Microsoft HoloLens.

If you’re interested in joining and helping to build this virtual metropolis, please contact me.

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People who live in big metropolises, like New York, London or Hong Kong, often say that they can always find someone within a few miles who has a special skill they need to complete some project or build a business. I’ve pointed out that the close proximity of millions of people with so many different skills is part of what has made cities successful economic engines during the industrial era.

When the population of your town is just a few thousand, there is a much smaller likelihood you’ll find the special skill you need nearby – and thus you’ll be less likely to achieve what you have in mind.

In the US alone, the Census Bureau has noted in its report “Patterns of Metropolitan and Micropolitan Population Change” that 10% of Americans live in one of the 576 small urban areas (where there is at least one urban cluster of less than 50,000, but at least 10,000 people).  That’s about 32 million people.

Another 6% lived in neither major metropolitan areas nor even these small urban areas. That’s just under 20 million people.

In this century, with broadband Internet, physical proximity is no longer necessary for people to collaborate and share their skills in a common project. Yet the small towns of these more than 50 million people are mostly not connected to each other.

So here’s my wild idea for the day: why not create a virtual metropolis of millions from the people in the small towns and communities of the countryside?

Imagine if even half of those 20 million (or 52 million) people who live outside the big metropolises could work together and be combined to act as if they were physically next door – while not actually living in such crowded conditions.

Such a network or virtual aggregation of small towns would offer their residents a much higher chance of succeeding with their business ideas and making a better living. If someone, for example, had the engineering talents to design a new product, that person might more likely find the necessary marketing talent somewhere in that network of millions of people.

image

Clearly, anyone connected to the Internet can try to reach out to anyone else whether that person lives in a small town or a big city.

But a network of small towns alone might encourage greater collaboration because of the shared background of country life and the perceived greater friendliness (and less wariness) of non-urban residents. In most small towns, people are used to working with each other. This would just be a virtual extension of the same idea.

Initially, of course, people would feel most comfortable with those in the same region, such as within North America. Over time, as people interact more with each other on a global basis, that comfort level will expand.

Whether on a regional or global basis, this virtual metropolis could compete on a more even playing field and even establish a unique brand for the people and companies located there. It would make it possible for rural residents to keep their quality of life and also make a decent living.

© 2016 Norman Jacknis, All Rights Reserved

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/152069321010/a-virtual-metropolis-of-the-countryside]

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The Internet Is Already Reinvigorating The Countryside

The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) held its annual summit last week in Columbus, Ohio.  As I’ve done in the last couple of years, I ran a workshop for small cities and rural areas.

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Unlike
past years, this time I didn’t only focus on the potential that the
Internet provides for the countryside, but also showed the ways that
some – but not all – of those communities are already being
reinvigorated.  This post will provide a summary of my presentation
during the first half of the workshop.

In addition to the
usual background about ICF, I let people know of the establishment of a
new ICF Institute that is specifically devoted to the study of rural
communities.  It’s based at Mississippi State University and is led by
Professor Roberto Gallardo.

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I quickly outlined the reasons why
changes in technology and the economy enable small towns and rural areas
to flourish again in this century:

  • Now and in the future, size and clusters count less than connections
  • Broadband enables economic growth in the way that proximity enabled urban economic growth in the industrial era
  • An
    ever increasing percentage of people can make a living by providing
    intangible products and services that can be delivered from anywhere to
    anywhere
  • A life-long 9 to 5 job in a big company is being pushed aside by the freelance economy
  • Visual communication will intensify the trends — although we are still only in the early stages of its use

But
I noted that only some small towns and rural areas have taken advantage
of these factors.  As a result, growth is very uneven in the
countryside as reported  by the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service.

Then
I reviewed the kinds of community building services that the leaders,
in contrast to the laggards, are providing on top of their broadband and
technology foundation.

That was all prelude to the main topics of the day:

  • the
    development of a new urban exodus by digital millennials from high-tech
    cities into those parts of the countryside that provide both a better
    quality of life as well as Internet connectivity
  • the need for
    residents of the countryside to participate in the global economy and
    not limit their horizons to their local areas or even just their region

The new urban exodus to the countryside is a phenomenon that is not only in

the US, but has also occurred in France and the UK.  Nor is it like the migration to exurban homes of more than a decade ago.  As a Pew study has reported:

But
to call these rural hot spots “exurban,” Garreau said, is missing the
point.  As he sees it, today’s urban exiles aren’t looking for a lengthy
commute from the far suburbs to a downtown office.  They’re seasoned
professionals with big incomes who’ve grown tired of the urban rat race,
he said.  They’re looking to completely eradicate the notion of
commuting to work and toiling from 9 to 5.  Rich greenery and wide-open
vistas are a must.

For a better understanding of this phenomenon, I showed a few minutes from Alissa Hessler’s very compelling video explaining what her Urban Exodus website and life is like.

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Then
I reviewed the evidence showing the greater growth path for those
participating in the global economy, even in rural areas.  However,
rural residents are at a competitive disadvantage compared to their city
cousins if they try to do this in isolation.

For that reason, I
emphasized the need for rural residents to achieve scale and influence
by working together in a kind of virtual metropolis or global virtual
Chamber of Commerce where they can meet and, more important, find
business partners, services and even customers.  Partly, this can work
is because it is also built on the shared experience and perspective
that comes from living in the countryside.

If you or the residents
of your community are interested in joining in this virtual metropolis,
please contact me – njacknis at intelligent community dot org.

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© 2016 Norman Jacknis, All Rights Reserved

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/146306552640/the-internet-is-already-reinvigorating-the]

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Where’s The City? Where’s The Country?

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I’ve written in the May 2014 issue of Urban China magazine and here before about the various ways that life in urban and rural areas is converging.

But when it comes to the economy, especially growing global trade, we often hear of great distinctions between city and countryside.  Indeed, it is often assumed that most of any country’s economy can be attributed to its cities and public policy follows that assumption.  

David Brunnen is Managing Editor of Groupe Intellex and Partner of NextGen in the UK. He has had a long and distinguished career as a leader in technology and public policy.

He has been doing some interesting research and concluded that this urban-rural divide is not as great as myth would have it.  This culminated in a report in May 2015 with the intriguing title, “Global Trade Development outwith the Metros: not beyond belief”.  He also provided something of an executive summary on his blog.

He observed that:

“Conventional wisdom says that the pursuit of global growth is surely what has led to the success of major cities…

“The notion of growth in international trade from enterprises rooted in our countryside and less-regarded towns may, at first glance, seem unlikely.   Scratch the stats however and beneath the glossy megacity headlines you can sniff the fragrance of a less-urban, more rural, renaissance.”

Brunnen points out that part of the myth about the role of cities is a very generous definition of what is a city.  As an example, Brunnen cites the work, ending last year, of the RSA City Growth Commission of the UK, whose aim was to “enable England’s major cities to drive growth”.  

“Some of these encompass far more places than are recognized by any governmental and administrative boundaries. The South Hampshire Metro area includes two cities (Southampton and Portsmouth) and the entire semi-rural conurbations on both sides of the linking M27 motorway. Their London Metro area extends west well into Hampshire, south to include Gatwick airport, east to include places on both sides of the Thames estuary and north to include Luton airport beyond Bedford.  In the debate about building airport capacity for London, it’s a wonder that Birmingham in the West Midlands is not a candidate.”

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This is one newspaper’s view of the London Metro area five years ago.

Brunnen goes on to note:

“Not surprisingly, with these broad definitions of their City Regions, the RSA City Growth Commission suggest that Metros contribute 61% of UK economic growth.  Ask ordinary people whether or not they live in a major city and the map would be very different – in fact it would be perfectly possible to conclude that economic growth is far more evenly spread with only around 50% of growth generated within those megacity places that demand such intensive management.”

But this is not just a story about England.  There are similar situations in many other countries, including the US.

A few years ago, Wendell Cox of Demographia, an international public policy firm, wrote “America is More Small Town than We Think”.  He starts with the statement we’ve often heard:

“America has become an overwhelmingly metropolitan nation. According to the 2000 census, more than 80 percent of the nation’s population resided in one of the 350 combined metropolitan statistical areas.”

According to the census, the figure was 79.0% in 2000 and is now 80.7%.  Moreover, the official definition of urban is not limited to obvious big cities like New York City.  Some of that urban population lives in what the Census Bureau calls urban clusters, whose population is between 2,500 and 50,000.

Focusing more on governance, Cox’s argument nevertheless parallels what Brunnen has written more recently about international trade.

“America is more “small town” than we often think, particularly in how we govern ourselves. In 2000, slightly more than one-half of the nation’s population lived in jurisdictions — cities, towns, boroughs, villages and townships — with fewer than 25,000 people or in rural areas. Planners and geographers might see regions as mega-units, but in fact, they are usually composed of many small towns and a far smaller number of larger cities. Indeed, among the metropolitan areas with more than one million residents in 2000, the average sized city, town, borough, village or township had a population of little more than 20,000.”

The 2012 survey by the Census found more or less the same results.  If anything there were more governments.  Many metropolitan areas are more networks of small towns than one master urban jurisdiction.

Brunnen goes on to explain why those outside the big cities are able to participate so vigorously in global trade.

“Digital transformation is enabling business to thrive in places where employees like to live – in places where they can afford to live – in places where they can appreciate the value of community – in places where they feel more at home.

“Dig deeper still into life beyond Metros and you’ll find a diverse and complex fabric of connections and capabilities – with very different channels and enablers for international trade.

“These less-regarded places are familiar with making do without much, if any, external intervention (or interference) from their national or regional governments. ‘Just Do It’ … This inbred capacity for action plus our newfound ability to network ideas and contacts without the hassle of travel points towards a greater levelling up of opportunity.”

That story has often been drowned out by reports of resurgent cities and ever declining rural areas.  The big city governments of the world have drawn most of the attention from big corporations and governments — perhaps it is easier to sell to or deal with very big municipal organizations?

I’d suggest reading the rest of his report, for the policies — which are both innovative and pragmatic —that he proposes to encourage economic growth.  

The bottom line of all this: the sharp dividing lines between rural and urban are not really all that sharp.  That calls for a better balance across geographic areas.  A nation’s strategy for its economic future, its infrastructure investments, broadband and technology needs to reflect the real distribution of the population and the potential of all areas to contribute to growth.

© 2015 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/124154805794/wheres-the-city-wheres-the-country]

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Countryside Complaints Collapse?

You often hear how the countryside is collapsing in various ways.  And clearly the remaining sixty million Americans who live in small towns and rural areas have faced a variety of challenges. 

As I described in my presentation at the Walsh University Leadership Academy a few weeks back, I’ve heard eight major complaints to explain why rural areas are in trouble.  While each of these has been true over the last few decades, increasingly the changes in our world mean that these complaints themselves are no longer relevant – the complaints are collapsing, while the countryside has new opportunities for renewal.

Let me address each of these, briefly, one at a time.  (If you’re interested in a fuller explanation, I can send you a copy of the whole 80-slide presentation.)

1. “We’re not big enough to have sustainable business clusters.”

So many economic development officials have had the cluster strategy drummed into their minds that they don’t realize how out of date it is.   As economist, Paul Krugman, said when he was given the Nobel Prize for his early work on economic geography, “[Clustering] may describe forces that are waning rather than gathering strength.”  My favorite example is the growth of the BATS Exchange at the expense of the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street.  BATS is headquartered in Lenexa, Kansas.

2. “We’ve lost most good-paying manufacturing jobs.”

So has everyone else.  Just as economic changes over the last hundred fifty years meant that we need very few people on the farm to produce the food the rest of us need, so too productivity in manufacturing means fewer people are needed in plants.  That is part of the growth of the economy.  But there has been a parallel increase in the service sector of the economy and the Internet has made possible a new range of intangible, digital products and services – from which people can make a living.  That, of course, doesn’t even account for the many unmet needs of our economy and society – for example, curing major diseases – that will generate employment.

3. “We don’t have skyscrapers filled with office workers.”

But work is no longer tied to these “places of work”.  Many people can work from home, without the need for a cubicle in a skyscraper.

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4. “We’re isolated in the middle of nowhere.”

You may be physically far from large metropolitan areas, but digital communications connects everyone everywhere, even face-to-face through video-conferencing.  (Of course, this assumes you have broadband connectivity sufficient for video – but that’s part of the point of this argument.  If you get the connectivity, there are all kinds of options open for you, even in the countryside.)

5. “We don’t have a major research university.”

There is an incredible amount of learning available on the Internet, including courses from traditional universities (like edX) and non-traditional sources.  And most of the research at the major universities is now available online, especially the kind of later stage research that is most easily commercialized.  So what you need is not the research university, but people with sufficient entrepreneurial imagination – and those folks can be found all over.

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6. “Whenever we get sick we need to go to a big city for care.”

With telemedicine (and even remote surgery, in the longer run), not all health care requires a visit to a big city.

7. “We can’t participate in developing new ideas and our innovators have no one to talk to (so they leave).”

Again, anyone with an innovative disposition can now reach out to others on the Internet.  Moreover, with the growth of the open innovation movement in corporations and governments, there are a variety of opportunities for people who live in the countryside to offer their new ideas – and be rewarded for them.

8. “There are not enough customers nearby and many of the business skills we need are also not nearby.”

Yet, economic opportunities and services are global.  All you need to be is connected to the global economy.  By the way, this isn’t limited to people who want to write computer software.  There are all kinds of interesting examples of people who live in the countryside making a living outside of the tech industry – for example, by teaching English to foreign students, or selling their works of art and craftsmanship, or providing help desk/customer support or even selling lobster bait bags.  Now the market is not limited to the small number of people who are nearby.

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So before people in the countryside give up on their futures, they should consider how these old obstacles of the past will collapse in the future.

© 2014 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/104844439162/countryside-complaints-collapse]

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A Virtual Metropolis In The Countryside?

People who live in big metropolises, like New York, London or Hong Kong, often say that they can always find someone within a few miles who has a special skill they need to complete some project or build a business.  I’ve pointed out that the close proximity of millions of people with so many different skills is part of what has made cities successful economic engines during the industrial era.

When the population of your town is just a few thousand, there is a much smaller likelihood you’ll find the special skill you need nearby – and thus you’ll be less likely to achieve what you have in mind.

In the US alone, the Census Bureau has noted in its report “Patterns of Metropolitan and Micropolitan Population Change” that 10% of Americans live in one of the 576 small urban areas (where there is at least one urban cluster of less than 50,000, but at least 10,000 people).   That’s about 32 million people.

Another 6% lived in neither major metropolitan areas nor even these small urban areas.  That’s just under 20 million people.

In this century, with broadband Internet, physical proximity is no longer necessary for people to collaborate and share their skills in a common project.  Yet the small towns of these more than 50 million people are mostly not connected to each other. 

So here’s my wild idea for the day: why not create a virtual metropolis of millions from the people in the small towns and communities of the countryside?

Imagine if even half of those 20 million (or 52 million) people who live outside the big metropolises could work together and be combined to act as if they were physically next door – while not actually living in such crowded conditions.

Such a network or virtual aggregation of small towns would offer their residents a much higher chance of succeeding with their business ideas and making a better living.  If someone, for example, had the engineering talents to design a new product, that person might more likely find the necessary marketing talent somewhere in that network of millions of people.

Clearly, anyone connected to the Internet can try to reach out to anyone else whether that person lives in a small town or a big city.  But a network of small towns alone might encourage greater collaboration because of the shared background of country life and the perceived greater friendliness (and less wariness) of non-urban residents.  In most small towns, people are used to working with each other.  This would just be a virtual extension of the same idea.

Initially, of course, people would feel most comfortable with those in the same region, such as within North America.  Over time, as people interact more with each other on a global basis, that comfort level will expand.

Whether on a regional or global basis, this virtual metropolis could compete on a more even playing field and even establish a unique brand for the people and companies located there.  It would make it possible for rural residents to keep their quality of life and also make a decent living.

What do you think?

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© 2014 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/100663996332/a-virtual-metropolis-in-the-countryside]

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Small Town, Big Story?

Can a town of 2,300 people in the countryside of Mississippi create a future for itself with broadband?  The answer is yes if you speak to the visionary leader of Quitman – its Mayor, Eddie Fulton – and about two dozen community leaders from business, education, churches, health care and other fields. 

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Quitman is not what you might think of as the likely star of a broadband story.  It has suffered de-population, economic difficulties, community tensions and all the other problems people in many small towns across America have witnessed.

Then along comes the Mississippi-based telecommunications company, C-Spire, who announced it would deploy gigabit Internet connection through fiber to the home in a small number of communities.  The key requirement was that a fairly sizable percentage of the community’s residents had to sign up for the service in advance.

Quitman was the smallest town to take on this challenge.  It would not normally be considered because of its size, but they had such a strong commitment to building on broadband that the company decided to make the investment.  Now, Quitman is ahead of the others in deployment and plans for developing their community.

Anyone who has ever been involved in a big technology project knows that the biggest obstacles to success are not technical issues, but human issues.  That’s why the chances that Quitman will succeed are good.  They have the necessary leadership, motivation and willingness to innovate.

They’ve also been helped by one of the long forgotten secrets of America’s agricultural and economic success – the extension service.  In particular, Professor Roberto Gallardo  at Mississippi State University Center For Technology Outreach has helped to educate the community and been their adviser.

And so it was that last week I was in Quitman leading what the Intelligent Community Forum calls a Master Class, as part of its community accelerator program. 

I pointed out that, rather than being an anomaly, a small city like Quitman could be the quintessential broadband success story.  I told the community leaders that a number of recent studies have shown that broadband has a much greater impact on small towns and rural areas than in cities.  As I’ve written before, this is not surprising.  Big cities provide many traditional ways that many people can interact with each other.  It is only when residents of small communities get connected to everyone else through the Internet that they can start to level the playing field.

I reviewed the historical context that is opening up new opportunities for rural communities.  I provided various examples, from elsewhere in North America and beyond, of the ways broadband can make a difference to the countryside.  The point of the examples was to give the community leaders ideas and also to see small towns, like theirs, doing great things with broadband. 

Then to bring the strategy and examples home, I asked them what they would do with broadband when it was deployed.  The community leaders separated into three groups, one each focused on education, health and economic growth.  They had a good discussion and came up with good ideas that will enable them to move fast when the connectivity is available later this year.

The signature line of the old song “New York, New York”, written at the height of that city’s industrial prominence, proclaimed: “If I can make it in New York, I’ll make it anywhere”.  This century, in the post-industrial era, the line should be: if broadband helps make Quitman a success story, then it can happen anywhere.

I’ll keep you apprised of their progress.

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© 2014 Norman Jacknis

[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/97730847152/small-town-big-story]

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Will The Best & Brightest Return To The Countryside?

There have been recent news stories about those coming and going and possibly returning to life in the countryside. 

A couple months ago, the New York Times had a major story about older folks returning to rural life after business careers elsewhere – “A Second Career, Happily in the Weeds”.  (Among others, it featured Debra Sloane, a former Cisco colleague.

Then this past weekend, in a kind of counterpoint, the Times’ Sunday Review section had an op-ed article about a woman who tried and gave up on living in the countryside – “Giving Up My Small-Town Fantasy”.   While she returned to the city, she also wrote that she moved to a small town because:

We were betting on the fact that we wouldn’t be alone in fleeing the big city for a small town. Urban living has become unthinkably expensive for many middle-class creative types. A 2010 study from the Journal of Economic Geography found a trifecta of reasons some rural areas have grown instead of shrunk: the creative class, entrepreneurial activity and outdoor amenities. In 2012, a University of Minnesota research fellow called the influx of 30-to-40-somethings into rural Minnesota towns a “brain gain” — flipping the conventional wisdom on the exodus from the boonies to the big city.

To further the idea that the traditional brain drain from rural areas is changing, the well-respected Daily Yonder had a feature article last month summarizing research on “The Rural Student Brain Gain”.  As they note:

The common wisdom is that rural America’s “best and brightest” want to leave home. New research shows these students are no more likely to want to leave than their counterparts. And when they do go, they have a stronger desire to return.

There is no doubt that many young people who can leave will do so – which more likely means the brightest who can get into major universities.  To some extent, all young people want to see the world beyond where they grew up. 

Almost a hundred years ago, Joe Young and Sam M. Lewis wrote what became a very popular song as many young men went off to Europe in World War I.

How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm
After they’ve seen Paree’
How ya gonna keep ‘em away from Broadway
Jazzin around and paintin’ the town

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By the way, this is not just a rural question.  A generation ago or so, parents in New York City were asking the same question – would the young return after seeing California?  Feeding this concern, for instance, was an article in the New York Times on October 1, 1980 about so many New Yorkers living in Los Angeles that two of the big high schools in Brooklyn held alumni reunions there.

So while we don’t want the young to feel they are being kept captive, the question is will they return to their countryside origins or something like it?

To answer that question, there are others that need to be answered first. 

In a post-industrial, global, Internet-connected economy, can young people still feel they are part of the larger world? Can they have as many opportunities for fulfillment and success back home as in the “big city”?

The answer is yes, the potential is there.  But the young are still leaving because too few rural communities have done the things they need to do in order to open up those opportunities for their brightest young people.  These lagging leaders haven’t built up the broadband necessary to connect both young and old to the world, nor have they helped people understand what they can do with that broadband connection, nor have they focused on the larger issues of developing a community anyone would want to live in if they had a choice in the matter.

And those who have given up hope for their rural communities because they know people there can never earn the megabucks found on Wall Street?  They should be informed by other research, including a fascinating, classic study by Professor Gundars Rudzitis of the University of Idaho, in his article in Rural Development Perspectives, “Amenities Increasingly Draw People to the Rural West”:

More people are moving to rural areas for reasons that have nothing to do with employment.  … the rural West is one of the fastest growing regions in the United States. …  Surveys in the 1970’s began to show that, if given a choice, people prefer to live in small towns and even in rural areas.

Amenities such as environmental quality and pace of life were becoming important in explaining why people move. The apparent sudden preference of people for rural life shocked many academics and planners because rural areas were thought to be at a major disadvantage compared with urban areas. 

These findings also were a surprise because they conflicted with the major assumptions of migration theory, or why people move. Simply put, people were thought to move because they wanted to increase or maximize their incomes. … This approach, however, failed to explain why people moved out of cities into places like the rural West.

…  People who migrate to high-amenity counties are often assumed to be retirees, as the growth and development of States like Arizona and Florida bears out. In our survey, however, only 10 percent of the new migrants were over 65 years of age. Instead, migrants were more likely to be young, highly educated professionals.

These studies and stories about people moving from city to country and back make clear that these decisions are more complicated than the headlines indicate.  And broadband connectivity will upset these patterns even more. 

Indeed, this new picture of what is going on may tell us why the best and brightest of the countryside might want to return after they’ve seen Paris (or New York or San Francisco).

© 2014 Norman Jacknis

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Presentation On Technology, People & Rural Prosperity

Previously, I mentioned that I gave the opening keynote presentation at the final annual conference on Rural Prosperity in Canada, held at Queen’s University of Kingston, Ontario. 

Jeffrey Dixon, Associate Director of the Monieson Centre which has run the project, was very kind in his feedback:

Norm Jacknis provided an inspiring presentation at our 6th annual rural economic development conference. He helped a group of community leaders, business people, policymakers and researchers consider new opportunities for rural prosperity and to think creatively about how they can use technology to transform their economies.

A video of the presentation, including questions and discussion, is now available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7PmYBxcqgA&index=3&list=PLc4qJ1UgXeFHWsWwtzQm5TvfeNuDvfRad and also as the Tumblr post just after this. I went into a fairly deep explanation of the trends occurring in the economy and technology – and why and how these trends open up new opportunities for small towns and rural areas.  It’s about an hour long video, although the actual presentation starts about two minutes into the video and ends about forty minutes later.  (Sit back and relax – I tried to make it as entertaining as possible.)

You can see the printed handout at http://business.queensu.ca/centres/monieson/events/Economic_Revitalization_2014/Presentations/2014%20conference%20presentations/Norm%20Jacknis.pdf   Of course, if you only read the handout, you’ll miss the videos and also what I say about each slide since I don’t really read them.

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Also, in conjunction with the conference, the university staff issued a series of research papers that you can read in the Journal of Rural and Community Development at http://www.jrcd.ca/viewissue.php?id=20

© 2014 Norman Jacknis

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Only One Way To Get Broadband?

For the first time ever, there was a Master Class focused on rural communities held two weeks ago as part of the annual summit of the Intelligent Community Forum.  There were people from Europe, the USA and Canada, Asia and as far away as New Zealand in the class.

Part of the focus of the class was on how rural areas can get broadband.  Too often there is the assumption that broadband and fiber optics are the same thing. 

One of my former colleagues used to describe the passion of some broadband advocates for fiber connections as a kind of “Fiber Taliban”.  But while fiber makes economic sense in densely populated urban areas, it becomes very expensive to deploy in the countryside.  As a practical matter, exclusive use of fiber is a dream that stands in the way of getting broadband to the countryside.  This may be one situation where, as the old line goes, “the perfect is the enemy of the good.”

In the class, I pointed out that just as there isn’t only one way for a person to get from Point A to Point B, there isn’t only one way for a person to get broadband. 

Like many people, I used to think that the laws of physics provide a natural cap on the amount of data that can go through the air.  And, in a theoretical sense, that is still true.  But the engineers have nevertheless made dramatic improvements. 

Verizon Wireless, for example, now usually range of 10-20 MB, although in NYC, it’s been independently measured above 30.  Its 4G is, according to Verizon, ten times the speed of 3G.

A couple of weeks ago, Huawei promised more.

Huawei Technologies officials say the giant tech vendor has successfully tested a WiFi service that hit more than 10 gigabits per second, a speed that is 10 times faster than what is currently commercially available.

There are a variety of ways that data can travel over the air.  The most well-established, alternatives include satellite, Wi-Fi and standard fixed wireless.  Free space optics, pictured below, offers a large pipe that can be especially useful for rugged territory. 

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Also of interest is the future use of “white space” as television goes digital.

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And balloons, which act as flexible and inexpensive towers.  Google has proposed balloons at high altitudes.  But even below the aviation floor of 500 feet, balloons can provide coverage over a wide swath of countryside.

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The Internet protocol doesn’t care what the communications medium is, so you can combine different methods to provide broadband to different kinds of places

By the way, there is also a lesson here in another important aspect of deploying broadband into the countryside – funding it.  The most successful broadband projects have usually combined more than one purpose:

  • High speed communications
  • Healthcare
  • Education and libraries
  • Business development
  • Smart grid and management of other infrastructure
  • Etc.

This combination opens up more sources of funds and means more people have a reason to use the broadband, thus making the project successful and sustainable.

This is a natural approach in really remote places.  A couple of the folks in the class came from Wanganui in New Zealand.  That town’s Mayor described their bottom up approach in which each farmer extends the network further into the countryside.  And, if you’re thinking this is just some semi-rural, small town place, look at this picture of what their broadband project eventually has to cover.

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Pictures via:

©2014 Norman Jacknis

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Mapping The Future: Technology, People & Rural Prosperity

This Tuesday, Queen’s University of Kingston, Ontario held its last annual conference on Rural Prosperity in Canada.  As Senior Fellow leading the Rural Imperative for the Intelligent Community Forum, I was asked to give the opening, keynote speech. 

My overall theme was that the countryside has a new opportunity to flourish, considering developments in technology and broadband, as well as the major post-industrial trends in North America, Europe, Japan and elsewhere.  I also emphasized that broadband, while a necessary condition for community development, is not sufficient and must be integrated with other elements that build quality of life.

I won’t go into more detail here, since my presentation will be posted on their website.  Instead I’ll report on some of the items presented by others that caught my attention.

1. Research on the economic impact of broadband

The researchers at the Monieson Centre of the university’s Business School presented the results of their analysis of the impact of broadband on employment and wages.  They found that broadband deployment, from 1997-2011, had only a minor positive impact on employment in urban areas, but had a significantly more positive impact in rural areas.  However, broadband was associated with wage increases in both rural and urban regions.

Moreover, they found there was no impact on employment at firms producing physical goods, but a major positive impact on employment and wages for services (although not all services). 

Although we didn’t coordinate, it was nice to see results that tracked with the broad trends I’ve been highlighting for the last few years.  In a way, my presentation explained the research results.

2. Rural broadband network in eastern Ontario

The association of the key leaders of rural counties in eastern Ontario (called the Eastern Ontario Wardens Caucus), with others, have spearheaded a project called EORN that is wrapping up its initial deployment this year.  The Eastern Ontario Regional Network is building out rural areas with broadband that provides its 500,000 residents with 10 megabit connections – much more than is common even among most urban users of the Internet in North America.  EORN officials think it is the most ambitious project of its kind in the Americas or possibly the world.  They are certain it is the “most sustainable rural network” in the world.

Later in the day, Bo Beaulieu of Purdue University’s Center for Regional Development spoke about the necessity and value of regional cooperation among rural counties.  My observation was that, with broadband and regional cooperation, these areas can present themselves as the virtual equivalent of a city and be able to compete economically in many ways not otherwise possible.

3. Creative uses of the countryside

There were various presentations on how the new countryside is more than just farming.  One example was a “multi-functional” farm – yes, it grew food for sale, but also was an environmental education center, alternative energy demonstration site, publishing office, and a bed-and-breakfast set up by a “refugee” from Toronto. 

Since, especially in this area of Canada, much of that nation’s history is better preserved in the countryside than in cities, historical and cultural resources have been used as a basis for economic development.  See, for example, History Lives Here which has a variety of products, from videos and guided tours to History labelled wines from local wineries.

All in all, a very interesting day that provided strong evidence of the energy and innovation which is creating the future of rural areas in Canada and the rest of the world.

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The Intelligent Community Forum’s Rural Imperative Program

Just a short note that the Intelligent Community Forum has asked me to be responsible for its Rural Imperative to build and create a renaissance of rural life through the power of high speed Internet and technology combined with community development. For more details see http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/02/prweb11614027.htm

Also, yesterday, Government Technology magazine’s Digital Communities website featured an article by me about the role that technologists need to play to help rural communities achieve their potential.  See “The Rural Imperative Needs Tech Creativity and Leadership” at http://www.digitalcommunities.com/articles/The-Rural-Imperative-Needs-Tech-Creativity-and-Leadership.html

The Rural Imperative is one of the very few activities that I’m undertaking – projects that will be fun, challenging and help change the world.  What more could anyone ask for?

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Is There A Rural Imperative?

As readers of this blog know, I’ve spent a lot of time in the last few years helping cities figure out the impact of new technologies and broadband on their future role in people’s lives and also helping mayors figure out ways of using those technologies to create new kinds of urban experiences and reasons for people to live in their cities. 

Cities were the winners out of the industrial age and attracted vast numbers of people from the countryside.  You can see that pattern repeating itself today in the newly successful industrial countries, like China, or those areas that are just starting to industrialize, like Africa.

In the already developed countries, even though the change from the industrial to the knowledge economy has been wrenching for many cities, urban areas are still ahead of the game by comparison with rural areas and are better positioned to take advantage of these changes.

In theory, though, the global Internet and the increased availability of inexpensive technology should have had an even greater impact on rural areas.  For if it were really true that people can work anywhere and quality of life becomes the key factor in where they choose to live, then many people would choose to live in the countryside and not in the more metropolitan regions.

It hasn’t happened that way.  As you can read from my post last week which, among other trends, noted that telecommuting has increased dramatically among urban residents, but not for those in exurbia.

There are many reasons why the countryside hasn’t realized its potential.  Partly, this is a residue of the industrial age – it is not yet true for everyone that they can take their work with them.  For many without college educations, making a living requires a commute to a manufacturing plant or a service location or a farm.

As has been true for declining urban areas, in some rural communities a social pathology sets in that reinforces decline and is evidenced in the increased use of drugs and other forms societal breakdown.  Even though it wouldn’t be called a pathology, the out-migration of many of their young adults has also been a concern of the remaining residents of rural areas.

Another part of the story is that many rural communities have not yet become fully connected to the global economy.  In his recent rural strategy announcements, President Obama pointed out that there is a 15% gap in broadband between urban and rural households.  Many technology providers have ignored rural communities.  That should change. 

While cities will still be attractive, they are not for everyone all the time.  Many people would indeed prefer to live in the countryside if they had economic opportunity, decent health care, a means to learn and in other ways overcome the sense of isolation that has historically been the downside of rural living. 

Many countries have come to realize that they cannot just move all of their rural residents into cities.  As India has learned, there is not enough economic opportunity in their cities and the urban infrastructure cannot support the migrants who have already moved there.   The New York Times recently reported that, even the Chinese, with a relentless urban focus, have started to worry that their nation’s traditional culture and identity is getting lost in the process.  Indeed, there has been a reverse migration from the cities to the Chinese countryside.

None of this is a surprise to those who live in rural communities.  What may be better news is that there is now an imperative to bring technology and global connectivity to the countryside – and to help them build those communities into attractive and sustainable places for people to stay and to return to.

We’ve seen this in President Obama’s rural broadband program and in the recently announced Canadian rural broadband investment of $305 million.

With this background, the Intelligent Community Forum started its Rural Imperative program last year.  It will apply to the world’s rural areas its unique, global perspective on how broadband and technology can be mutually reinforcing with community development and growth.  This is an important step in helping the new connected countryside go from potential possibility to a reality.

© 2014 Norman Jacknis

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