9 ms·

Metro areas suffering from brain drain or benefiting from brain concentration

131 points by thebent 10y ago

niftich 10y ago
Data is nice, but this makes sense. There's objectively not much in Cumberland, Goldsboro, Valdosta... meanwhile, large metro areas that aren't too far are attracting educated workers. Their definition seems a bit strange, however. I understand "brain drain" as a different phenomenon from the lack of a highly-educated workforce, and their study does not account for movement of people, which analyses of brain drain typically do. This just seems like certain metros are lacking highly educated workers, which should be expected as particular employers decline or relocate.
- zaphods-towel 10y ago
  I agree, this isn't really a measure of "brain drain." Brain drain is when educated people leave an area (usually a country) en masse. For example, one of my professors is from Sri Lanka, and she used her graduating class as an example of brain drain— more than half of them left Sri Lanka upon receiving their undergraduate degree.
  - jwatte 10y ago
    When that happens, ratio of educated workforce goes down. If we assume initial conditions for education are approximately equal, then outcome ratios do measure (the result of) brain drain.
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
Writing from brain gain #4 - Ithaca NY - I can attest to the many reasons educated people would choose to live here, but one thing that cannot be left unsaid is that our economy is dominated by Cornell and Ithaca College, and most of the rest is the service industry for employees of the two. Our success didn't just appear out of nowhere. Aside from that, however, Ithaca has all the makings of a great place for professionals to live. There are more restaurants per person here than NYC; the traffic is never bad except during 30-minute rush hour intervals; there is enough middle/upper-middle income here to support high-end retail and services (ex: even if there is only one very good spa and steakhouse, it is still a very good spa and steakhouse); the cost of living is...well it's ok. Housing is expensive in the City and the surrounding Town, but if you go a mere 5 minutes out of the Town of Ithaca in any direction you practically pay peanuts. Still, food and other necessities are Upstate-cheap if you don't shop at Wegmans. But most importantly, Ithaca is a pleasant place filled with pleasant people. The average person on the street is friendly and helpful. Nobody is "too important." Maybe it's because we have a top public high school where rich and poor alike receive a quality education, but there isn't an economic "us vs them" one often finds in decrepit Rust Belt cities with wealthy suburbs or revitalized metro areas that sag professionals with "gentrifier guilt." The point I'm trying to make is that if you want professionals (and thereby, businesses) to come and stay, you have to make your city a nice place to live. Tax breaks don't fix a lousy commute. Fancy new mixed-use high-rises don't diminish the sneers you get from service workers who see you as a disruptive yuppie who is destroying their hometown without even realizing it. I know it's not terribly helpful to suggest "if you want to make your city attractive to professionals, it just has to have that spark," but I see it as akin to a doctor recommending the extremely difficult tasks of regular exercise and a healthy diet instead solving every problem with a pill.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- user837387 10y ago
  >>There are more restaurants per person here than NYC Seems like dishonest to make a comparison like this given the density of NYC. You killed your credibility right there. It reminded me of the saying: >>There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics It also reminded me of: https://xkcd.com/1102/ https://xkcd.com/1102/
  - wavefunction 10y ago
    Considering the op mentioned per capita rates, that seems to directly reference "density."
    - user837387 10y ago
      My comment went right over your head.
  - danudey 10y ago
    This could be a valid metric if your goal is to find a place where restaurants are less likely to be crowded. The more restaurants per person, the less likely a given restaurant will be overcrowded or have a long waitlist.
- mdergosits 10y ago
  >Still, food and other necessities are Upstate-cheap if you don't shop at Wegmans. Where do you suggest shopping for food then? Wegmans is cheaper than Tops.
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    Aldi is the way to go. Insanely cheap and without the temptations to dump half your paycheck every time you go. A lot of high quality genetics too.
akshayB 10y ago
Data visualization is nice but I feel compensation also plays a major role in this. Pay-scale of an engineer in silicon valley is much higher compared any other state. Another important factor is also due to globalization lot of jobs disappeared out of the rust belt states and that is why you see lot of brain drain on Eastern facing US states.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  That is a very good point. When businesses close down or leave town, the professional service industry follows. All of those doctors, accountants, lawyers, psychologists, physical therapists, and so on need people with good jobs to support their income, so for them there's no sense in sticking around when theirs are the kinds of industries that reliably expand and contract with the economy as a whole.
- rqebmm 10y ago
  > Pay-scale of an engineer in silicon valley is much higher compared any other state. Until you factor in cost of living. Last I checked Austin has lead in cost-of-living-adjusted salaries for the last few years.
  - pmiller2 10y ago
    Unless you have large, fixed expenses like student loans. Then, the larger absolute salary wins in spite of things like housing (the primary driver of regional differences in COL) being more expensive.
    - chronic92 10y ago
      Or cars, or even Apple products. People love defending Austin, Boston, etc. Cost of living only applies to food and housing, more of less. After that $20-50K is paid, cost of living does not apply to anything you spend past $50K.
      - pmiller2 10y ago
rmason 10y ago
I totally understand why Ann Arbor is on the list. But more than a little surprised not to see Detroit. Lots of my younger engineering friends from out state Michigan are finding jobs and settling into the downtown area. Just heard yesterday that Snapchat is opening an office downtown.
- pmiller2 10y ago
  I'm from Michigan, and there's no way you could pay me enough to live in Detroit. I could bear to live in Ann Arbor for the right amount of money, but forget Detroit.
  - __derek__ 10y ago
    I'm also from Michigan, and living in Detroit is actually pretty cool.[1] It has great beer, good food, a low cost-of-living, great bikability, and a thriving scene of 20/30-somethings (both yuppies and not). Granted, it is a spiky place: you either love it (hit that peak) or hate it (land in those valleys). The phrase "to each their own" certainly applies. [1]: I don't live in Michigan any more, but I do visit Detroit regularly.
  - headcanon 10y ago
    I think you need to take another visit to that city, friend. It's not even the same place that it was a few years ago.
  - kevindong 10y ago
    I went to the University of Michigan hackathon (MHacks) back in October of this year which was, for some reason, hosted in Detroit (absolutely _terribly_ done hackathon, btw). I was shocked at how bad Detroit actually was. In my opinion, it's actually worse than what people say. A story I heard from one of the people that live in the area is that people leave their cars unlocked and devoid of valuable belongs so crackheads won't break their windows to search for money. They're still going to search, but they won't break the windows.
  - ap22213 10y ago
    Maybe it's changed. But, I worked in Ann Arbor in software from the late 90s to the mid 2000s, and Detroit was way cooler than Ann Arbor. If you want to wear polo shirts, sweaters around the neck, eat pâté and cheese, drink wine, and look beautiful, then A^2 is your place. But, if you want anything interesting, you go into Detroit.
aylmao 10y ago
shout out to Ithaca in #4 in Brain Concentration Index
glup 10y ago
Note the strong correlation between gain areas and the strongly blue counties from the election: http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/president http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/president. Interesting that economic and social force bring the educated together into dense communities, where they are then under-represented given the way political power is currently apportioned.
- oniMaker 10y ago
  It's not surprising that the "educated" skew blue. The institutions in this country preach ideology in addition to teaching practical skills. We all know which direction the majority ideology follows... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/6/liberal-professors-outnumber-conservatives-12-1/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/6/liberal-profe...
  - zaphods-towel 10y ago
    Unsurprising given the strongly anti-intellectual thread woven through conservative culture these days.
    - mixedCase 10y ago
      I wouldn't say "these days" given the current situation. The arguably most extremist form of the mainstream right, the alt-right, is quite intellectual and fairly secular.
  - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    If critical thinking is considered as "preaching ideologies", I'm all for it! Seriously, engineers and (hardish) scientists often go through universities with little exposure to preachy liberal art professors, and they still mostly come out as liberals.
  - majormajor 10y ago
    I spent ten+ years in a private Christian school in the US. We had special Christian-version science textbooks, daily Bible class along with all the regular staple courses, etc. My take is that the conservative right has been taken over by an extreme religious element that has actively withdrawn from engaging with education, science, and non-religiously-affiliated institutions. Everything is extremely filtered and anything mainstream is to be avoided at all costs. So where are people from other ideologies supposed to come from if they're brought up to withdraw to their own parallel no-differing-views world?
keithpeter 10y ago
"Even with this dedication, the city’s population dropped 3.4 percent to 20,130 from April 1, 2010, to July 1, 2015, according to the Census Bureau." UK: Twenty thousand people isn't even a town here, let alone a city. Am I being harsh in suggesting that this is basically rounding error? Isn't the dynamic towards urban (N*10^6 people with 1 < N < 10) concentration?
- niftich 10y ago
  Although that quote refers to the jurisdiction of Cumberland itself, the ranking is ostensibly about the Cumberland, MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area, with a population [1] of almost 100k. [1] https://www.bea.gov/regional/bearfacts/pdf.cfm?fips=19060&areatype=MSA&geotype=4 https://www.bea.gov/regional/bearfacts/pdf.cfm?fips=19060&ar...
  - keithpeter 10y ago
    One hundred thousand is just about a town over here. Best of luck from my small crowded island.
    - pavanky 10y ago
      The definitions of jurisdictions do not translate well across countries. The definition of city / county / town etc are not even consistent across United States. You can not compare a UK city to those used in USA. For reference, the British definitions did stick around in India, and being an Indian, I can relate to what you are saying :)
vxxzy 10y ago
Hey! I actually live in Cumberland! It is as bad as written. Extreme loss of white-collar opportunities. We do have a navy-sea command base where IBM has a data-center. They've had the same jobs advertised for over 2 years now. Very hard to attract white-collar workers. The cost of living isn't so bad though, and the nature is wonderful!
- freshyill 10y ago
  I drove past Cumberland on a weekend trip from DC to Ohio last year. This will sound like an underhanded compliment, but it is genuine: it looked very pretty from the highway! The mountains were beautiful and it seemed like every building in the whole town was made of brick. I plan to make it a point to actually visit there someday. I really wish it were possible to live in a quaint, small city like that.
- euyyn 10y ago
  You guys have Dr. McNinja though.
spitfire 10y ago
Is this data available somewhere public? I'd like to do some of my own research and don't have access to a Bloomberg.
Bjorkbat 10y ago
In case anyone is curious, that blue county in New Mexico is Santa Fe county, which just happens to be adjacent to Los Alamos county. Besides the Los Alamos connection, there is a research institute that studies complexity in the county itself, and three private liberal arts colleges. People also like to move here for the culture alone. Last I checked the arts economy is somewhere in the top 5 in the country. Combined with the well-forested mountains, cooler weather, and a history that predates European exploration of the Americas (roughly where the central plaza currently stands was an old Pueblo village built in 900 AD), it makes for an interesting place. Not that I'm particularly trying to convince anyone to move there. Downside of its long history is that the awkward road network is less a result of smart urban planning and more the fact that they were old stagecoach routes that became legitimized by sheer virtue of being old. Also, you likely won't have any choice but to live in a house made out of adobe (dried mud), because tourism, which might be why the housing market there is relatively crazy compared to the rest of poor old New Mexico. In case you're wondering, I live 50 miles south in Albuquerque and once briefly lived in Santa Fe before the high rent got to me.
- sjg007 10y ago
  A big not widely talked about issue is crime.
  - madengr 10y ago
    Ha ha, Santa Fe, the city of enchantment, though last time I was there there were plenty of broken liquor bottles at the bus stops. To each their own though.
  - Bjorkbat 10y ago
    Yeah, that's true, although I've counted myself lucky for being largely unaffected by it. That's what you get for being the richest city in one of the poorest states. Upscale art galleries and horrible drunk driving statistics.
cowardlydragon 10y ago
I have parents in Bloomington, Indiana. It's a surprisingly vibrant town with restaurants and culture, arguably on equal footing with the more populous Indianapolis, and much much greater than surrounding communitites. Oh, right, and it has a Big Ten university in it noncoincidentally. I'm surprised these shitty / declining areas don't take advantage of the incredibly expensive college in other areas by setting up new colleges in their areas and subsidizing the tuition, and investing in them to make them great. Granted that takes a while to accomplish, but the positive feedback of major schools is undeniable... and it ain't just the football team.
- jwatte 10y ago
  That also requires an appetite for public education. Which had to be tax funded (yuck) and can't be Christian (double yuck) and requires equal race and gender access (triple yuck.) Old America hasn't done that, for a reason. That's why it's old.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  I'm surprised these shitty / declining areas don't take advantage of I'm not. If the smart people keep leaving then the quality of decision-making is virtually guaranteed to decline.
alvern 10y ago
What is the brain density in northern Alabama? Huntsville? Is that NASA/aerospace jobs still?
copenbacon 10y ago
Rural jobs are dying, kinda of sad, really.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mjevans 10y ago
  More connections means more opportunity. The real cost of being rural is being even more disconnected; the divide between people still exists, but adding distance can make it insurmountable.
lawless123 10y ago
Are they all moving to Boulder for the legal high? :)
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  Programming can be stressful work sometimes.

131 points by thebent 10y ago

Data is nice, but this makes sense. There's objectively not much in Cumberland, Goldsboro, Valdosta... meanwhile, large metro areas that aren't too far are attracting educated workers. Their definition seems a bit strange, however. I understand "brain drain" as a different phenomenon from the lack of a highly-educated workforce, and their study does not account for movement of people, which analyses of brain drain typically do. This just seems like certain metros are lacking highly educated workers, which should be expected as particular employers decline or relocate.

zaphods-towel 10y ago
I agree, this isn't really a measure of "brain drain." Brain drain is when educated people leave an area (usually a country) en masse. For example, one of my professors is from Sri Lanka, and she used her graduating class as an example of brain drain— more than half of them left Sri Lanka upon receiving their undergraduate degree.
- jwatte 10y ago
  When that happens, ratio of educated workforce goes down. If we assume initial conditions for education are approximately equal, then outcome ratios do measure (the result of) brain drain.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago

Writing from brain gain #4 - Ithaca NY - I can attest to the many reasons educated people would choose to live here, but one thing that cannot be left unsaid is that our economy is dominated by Cornell and Ithaca College, and most of the rest is the service industry for employees of the two. Our success didn't just appear out of nowhere. Aside from that, however, Ithaca has all the makings of a great place for professionals to live. There are more restaurants per person here than NYC; the traffic is never bad except during 30-minute rush hour intervals; there is enough middle/upper-middle income here to support high-end retail and services (ex: even if there is only one very good spa and steakhouse, it is still a very good spa and steakhouse); the cost of living is...well it's ok. Housing is expensive in the City and the surrounding Town, but if you go a mere 5 minutes out of the Town of Ithaca in any direction you practically pay peanuts. Still, food and other necessities are Upstate-cheap if you don't shop at Wegmans. But most importantly, Ithaca is a pleasant place filled with pleasant people. The average person on the street is friendly and helpful. Nobody is "too important." Maybe it's because we have a top public high school where rich and poor alike receive a quality education, but there isn't an economic "us vs them" one often finds in decrepit Rust Belt cities with wealthy suburbs or revitalized metro areas that sag professionals with "gentrifier guilt." The point I'm trying to make is that if you want professionals (and thereby, businesses) to come and stay, you have to make your city a nice place to live. Tax breaks don't fix a lousy commute. Fancy new mixed-use high-rises don't diminish the sneers you get from service workers who see you as a disruptive yuppie who is destroying their hometown without even realizing it. I know it's not terribly helpful to suggest "if you want to make your city attractive to professionals, it just has to have that spark," but I see it as akin to a doctor recommending the extremely difficult tasks of regular exercise and a healthy diet instead solving every problem with a pill.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
user837387 10y ago
>>There are more restaurants per person here than NYC Seems like dishonest to make a comparison like this given the density of NYC. You killed your credibility right there. It reminded me of the saying: >>There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics It also reminded me of: https://xkcd.com/1102/ https://xkcd.com/1102/
- wavefunction 10y ago
  Considering the op mentioned per capita rates, that seems to directly reference "density."
  - user837387 10y ago
    My comment went right over your head.
- danudey 10y ago
  This could be a valid metric if your goal is to find a place where restaurants are less likely to be crowded. The more restaurants per person, the less likely a given restaurant will be overcrowded or have a long waitlist.
mdergosits 10y ago
>Still, food and other necessities are Upstate-cheap if you don't shop at Wegmans. Where do you suggest shopping for food then? Wegmans is cheaper than Tops.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  Aldi is the way to go. Insanely cheap and without the temptations to dump half your paycheck every time you go. A lot of high quality genetics too.

akshayB 10y ago

Data visualization is nice but I feel compensation also plays a major role in this. Pay-scale of an engineer in silicon valley is much higher compared any other state. Another important factor is also due to globalization lot of jobs disappeared out of the rust belt states and that is why you see lot of brain drain on Eastern facing US states.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
That is a very good point. When businesses close down or leave town, the professional service industry follows. All of those doctors, accountants, lawyers, psychologists, physical therapists, and so on need people with good jobs to support their income, so for them there's no sense in sticking around when theirs are the kinds of industries that reliably expand and contract with the economy as a whole.
rqebmm 10y ago
> Pay-scale of an engineer in silicon valley is much higher compared any other state. Until you factor in cost of living. Last I checked Austin has lead in cost-of-living-adjusted salaries for the last few years.
- pmiller2 10y ago
  Unless you have large, fixed expenses like student loans. Then, the larger absolute salary wins in spite of things like housing (the primary driver of regional differences in COL) being more expensive.
  - chronic92 10y ago
    Or cars, or even Apple products. People love defending Austin, Boston, etc. Cost of living only applies to food and housing, more of less. After that $20-50K is paid, cost of living does not apply to anything you spend past $50K.
    - pmiller2 10y ago

rmason 10y ago

I totally understand why Ann Arbor is on the list. But more than a little surprised not to see Detroit. Lots of my younger engineering friends from out state Michigan are finding jobs and settling into the downtown area. Just heard yesterday that Snapchat is opening an office downtown.

pmiller2 10y ago
I'm from Michigan, and there's no way you could pay me enough to live in Detroit. I could bear to live in Ann Arbor for the right amount of money, but forget Detroit.
- __derek__ 10y ago
  I'm also from Michigan, and living in Detroit is actually pretty cool.[1] It has great beer, good food, a low cost-of-living, great bikability, and a thriving scene of 20/30-somethings (both yuppies and not). Granted, it is a spiky place: you either love it (hit that peak) or hate it (land in those valleys). The phrase "to each their own" certainly applies. [1]: I don't live in Michigan any more, but I do visit Detroit regularly.
- headcanon 10y ago
  I think you need to take another visit to that city, friend. It's not even the same place that it was a few years ago.
- kevindong 10y ago
  I went to the University of Michigan hackathon (MHacks) back in October of this year which was, for some reason, hosted in Detroit (absolutely _terribly_ done hackathon, btw). I was shocked at how bad Detroit actually was. In my opinion, it's actually worse than what people say. A story I heard from one of the people that live in the area is that people leave their cars unlocked and devoid of valuable belongs so crackheads won't break their windows to search for money. They're still going to search, but they won't break the windows.
- ap22213 10y ago
  Maybe it's changed. But, I worked in Ann Arbor in software from the late 90s to the mid 2000s, and Detroit was way cooler than Ann Arbor. If you want to wear polo shirts, sweaters around the neck, eat pâté and cheese, drink wine, and look beautiful, then A^2 is your place. But, if you want anything interesting, you go into Detroit.

aylmao 10y ago

shout out to Ithaca in #4 in Brain Concentration Index

glup 10y ago

Note the strong correlation between gain areas and the strongly blue counties from the election: http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/president http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/president. Interesting that economic and social force bring the educated together into dense communities, where they are then under-represented given the way political power is currently apportioned.

oniMaker 10y ago
It's not surprising that the "educated" skew blue. The institutions in this country preach ideology in addition to teaching practical skills. We all know which direction the majority ideology follows... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/6/liberal-professors-outnumber-conservatives-12-1/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/6/liberal-profe...
- zaphods-towel 10y ago
  Unsurprising given the strongly anti-intellectual thread woven through conservative culture these days.
  - mixedCase 10y ago
    I wouldn't say "these days" given the current situation. The arguably most extremist form of the mainstream right, the alt-right, is quite intellectual and fairly secular.
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago
  If critical thinking is considered as "preaching ideologies", I'm all for it! Seriously, engineers and (hardish) scientists often go through universities with little exposure to preachy liberal art professors, and they still mostly come out as liberals.
- majormajor 10y ago
  I spent ten+ years in a private Christian school in the US. We had special Christian-version science textbooks, daily Bible class along with all the regular staple courses, etc. My take is that the conservative right has been taken over by an extreme religious element that has actively withdrawn from engaging with education, science, and non-religiously-affiliated institutions. Everything is extremely filtered and anything mainstream is to be avoided at all costs. So where are people from other ideologies supposed to come from if they're brought up to withdraw to their own parallel no-differing-views world?

keithpeter 10y ago

"Even with this dedication, the city’s population dropped 3.4 percent to 20,130 from April 1, 2010, to July 1, 2015, according to the Census Bureau." UK: Twenty thousand people isn't even a town here, let alone a city. Am I being harsh in suggesting that this is basically rounding error? Isn't the dynamic towards urban (N*10^6 people with 1 < N < 10) concentration?

niftich 10y ago
Although that quote refers to the jurisdiction of Cumberland itself, the ranking is ostensibly about the Cumberland, MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area, with a population [1] of almost 100k. [1] https://www.bea.gov/regional/bearfacts/pdf.cfm?fips=19060&areatype=MSA&geotype=4 https://www.bea.gov/regional/bearfacts/pdf.cfm?fips=19060&ar...
- keithpeter 10y ago
  One hundred thousand is just about a town over here. Best of luck from my small crowded island.
  - pavanky 10y ago
    The definitions of jurisdictions do not translate well across countries. The definition of city / county / town etc are not even consistent across United States. You can not compare a UK city to those used in USA. For reference, the British definitions did stick around in India, and being an Indian, I can relate to what you are saying :)

vxxzy 10y ago

Hey! I actually live in Cumberland! It is as bad as written. Extreme loss of white-collar opportunities. We do have a navy-sea command base where IBM has a data-center. They've had the same jobs advertised for over 2 years now. Very hard to attract white-collar workers. The cost of living isn't so bad though, and the nature is wonderful!

freshyill 10y ago
I drove past Cumberland on a weekend trip from DC to Ohio last year. This will sound like an underhanded compliment, but it is genuine: it looked very pretty from the highway! The mountains were beautiful and it seemed like every building in the whole town was made of brick. I plan to make it a point to actually visit there someday. I really wish it were possible to live in a quaint, small city like that.
euyyn 10y ago
You guys have Dr. McNinja though.

spitfire 10y ago

Is this data available somewhere public? I'd like to do some of my own research and don't have access to a Bloomberg.

Bjorkbat 10y ago

In case anyone is curious, that blue county in New Mexico is Santa Fe county, which just happens to be adjacent to Los Alamos county. Besides the Los Alamos connection, there is a research institute that studies complexity in the county itself, and three private liberal arts colleges. People also like to move here for the culture alone. Last I checked the arts economy is somewhere in the top 5 in the country. Combined with the well-forested mountains, cooler weather, and a history that predates European exploration of the Americas (roughly where the central plaza currently stands was an old Pueblo village built in 900 AD), it makes for an interesting place. Not that I'm particularly trying to convince anyone to move there. Downside of its long history is that the awkward road network is less a result of smart urban planning and more the fact that they were old stagecoach routes that became legitimized by sheer virtue of being old. Also, you likely won't have any choice but to live in a house made out of adobe (dried mud), because tourism, which might be why the housing market there is relatively crazy compared to the rest of poor old New Mexico. In case you're wondering, I live 50 miles south in Albuquerque and once briefly lived in Santa Fe before the high rent got to me.

sjg007 10y ago
A big not widely talked about issue is crime.
- madengr 10y ago
  Ha ha, Santa Fe, the city of enchantment, though last time I was there there were plenty of broken liquor bottles at the bus stops. To each their own though.
- Bjorkbat 10y ago
  Yeah, that's true, although I've counted myself lucky for being largely unaffected by it. That's what you get for being the richest city in one of the poorest states. Upscale art galleries and horrible drunk driving statistics.

cowardlydragon 10y ago

I have parents in Bloomington, Indiana. It's a surprisingly vibrant town with restaurants and culture, arguably on equal footing with the more populous Indianapolis, and much much greater than surrounding communitites. Oh, right, and it has a Big Ten university in it noncoincidentally. I'm surprised these shitty / declining areas don't take advantage of the incredibly expensive college in other areas by setting up new colleges in their areas and subsidizing the tuition, and investing in them to make them great. Granted that takes a while to accomplish, but the positive feedback of major schools is undeniable... and it ain't just the football team.

jwatte 10y ago
That also requires an appetite for public education. Which had to be tax funded (yuck) and can't be Christian (double yuck) and requires equal race and gender access (triple yuck.) Old America hasn't done that, for a reason. That's why it's old.
anigbrowl 10y ago
I'm surprised these shitty / declining areas don't take advantage of I'm not. If the smart people keep leaving then the quality of decision-making is virtually guaranteed to decline.

alvern 10y ago

What is the brain density in northern Alabama? Huntsville? Is that NASA/aerospace jobs still?

copenbacon 10y ago

Rural jobs are dying, kinda of sad, really.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mjevans 10y ago
More connections means more opportunity. The real cost of being rural is being even more disconnected; the divide between people still exists, but adding distance can make it insurmountable.

lawless123 10y ago

Are they all moving to Boulder for the legal high? :)

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
Programming can be stressful work sometimes.