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Urbanization. The trend is continuing and is going to continue and as it does the rural areas of the country are going to see more and more resources drain to u

by weeksie 12y ago

Urbanization. The trend is continuing and is going to continue and as it does the rural areas of the country are going to see more and more resources drain to urban centers. Eventually the rural population will be entirely composed of maniac bandits driving burnt out plymouth dusters with mounted machine gun turrets and terrified hill people raising rabbits for food in their back yards. But for serious, as we see urbanization pick up, the rural areas are going to continue their downward slide. And as the trend toward suburbanization has reversed we're going to see the suburbs become the new "burnt out inner city"—because inner city is no longer synonymous with poverty and crime.

briandear 12y ago
Depends on the inner city you're talking about..
amatxn 12y ago
Wholeheartedly agree about the urbanization trend, but if you look at that data, that whole section of the Plains states and central US that is 'Doing Better' is in large part rural. My county is 'Randall' in the Texas panhandle, we rank 133 on the list. The metropolitan area (if you call it that) is > 250K. My wife and I are highly educated and we live well above the county and national median income level. Quality of life is good and cost of living is low. I'd say some rural areas are doing things right, the oil boom has a lot to do with that.
ghaff 12y ago
I assume you realize that even your second paragraph is a gross exaggeration. Desirable cities also have desirable suburbs and exurbs and there's little in property price trends to suggest that's changing. Lots of people seem to assume that anyone who could afford to would live in San Francisco or New York given the choice but that's simply not true. There has been a broader migration away from rural areas but I also know lots of people who work remotely from more or less rural locales and, at least in principle, that should become more practical rather than less. It's just not economically rational, in the US at least, for everyone who is upwardly mobile to pack themselves into a handful of desirable cities.
thrownaway2424 12y ago
I'm not sure this forecast is based on the data in this article. Rural land is actually ridiculously valuable and increasing in value rapidly. I passed up an opportunity to buy some prime farmland in 2008 at what I considered an exorbitant price. The same land today is worth triple. Anyway there's a bunch of very empty, very rural counties in the top decile of this analysis. Just look at Iowa where there are lots of top counties including Story County. Then look at Wyoming which looks really good in this analysis. To some extent I think this analysis is plagued by law of small numbers. It seems like the ranking is highly influenced by the fraction of disabled people but there's a lot of quantization noise in that figure, especially when a county like Teton County, Wyoming contains only 22000 people. I think the same thing is probably happening in rural eastern California, for instance in Mono County (pop 14000).
- deet 12y ago
  Teton County and Mono County are both unique in that they are dominated by very expensive resort towns (Jackson Hole and Mammoth Lakes).
- ap22213 12y ago
  Define valuable. I live in Northern Virginia, where a good acre of land can cost a million dollars. Yet, I can drive 3.5 hours and get to land that's worth under $1,000 an acre.
  - thrownaway2424 12y ago
    Prime farmland (USDA class 1 soil capability) in Iowa costs 10-12 thousand dollars per acre. In 2006 such land cost 3-4 thousand. Ref: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/html/c2-75.html http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/html/c2-75.h...
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      Which is currently driven up in price by cheap money that has nowhere else to go for safe yields (after the stock collapse in '00 and the real estate collapse of '08). http://giannini.ucop.edu/media/are-update/files/articles/V15N1_3.pdf http://giannini.ucop.edu/media/are-update/files/articles/V15...
netcan 12y ago
There may be a bias in the scale making the rural-city divide look worse than it is. Rural areas are often cheaper, so the median income could represent more purchasing power. Also a bachelor’s degree here is used as an indicator/measure. In some places these are less valued and relevant to employment as others. Every basket of measures is imperfect and I quite like the ones used here (education, income, unemployment, disability, life expectancy and obesity), but there probably are some weird biases someplace.

by weeksie 12y ago

briandear 12y ago

Depends on the inner city you're talking about..

amatxn 12y ago

Wholeheartedly agree about the urbanization trend, but if you look at that data, that whole section of the Plains states and central US that is 'Doing Better' is in large part rural. My county is 'Randall' in the Texas panhandle, we rank 133 on the list. The metropolitan area (if you call it that) is > 250K. My wife and I are highly educated and we live well above the county and national median income level. Quality of life is good and cost of living is low. I'd say some rural areas are doing things right, the oil boom has a lot to do with that.

ghaff 12y ago

I assume you realize that even your second paragraph is a gross exaggeration. Desirable cities also have desirable suburbs and exurbs and there's little in property price trends to suggest that's changing. Lots of people seem to assume that anyone who could afford to would live in San Francisco or New York given the choice but that's simply not true. There has been a broader migration away from rural areas but I also know lots of people who work remotely from more or less rural locales and, at least in principle, that should become more practical rather than less. It's just not economically rational, in the US at least, for everyone who is upwardly mobile to pack themselves into a handful of desirable cities.

thrownaway2424 12y ago

I'm not sure this forecast is based on the data in this article. Rural land is actually ridiculously valuable and increasing in value rapidly. I passed up an opportunity to buy some prime farmland in 2008 at what I considered an exorbitant price. The same land today is worth triple. Anyway there's a bunch of very empty, very rural counties in the top decile of this analysis. Just look at Iowa where there are lots of top counties including Story County. Then look at Wyoming which looks really good in this analysis. To some extent I think this analysis is plagued by law of small numbers. It seems like the ranking is highly influenced by the fraction of disabled people but there's a lot of quantization noise in that figure, especially when a county like Teton County, Wyoming contains only 22000 people. I think the same thing is probably happening in rural eastern California, for instance in Mono County (pop 14000).

deet 12y ago
Teton County and Mono County are both unique in that they are dominated by very expensive resort towns (Jackson Hole and Mammoth Lakes).
ap22213 12y ago
Define valuable. I live in Northern Virginia, where a good acre of land can cost a million dollars. Yet, I can drive 3.5 hours and get to land that's worth under $1,000 an acre.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  Prime farmland (USDA class 1 soil capability) in Iowa costs 10-12 thousand dollars per acre. In 2006 such land cost 3-4 thousand. Ref: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/html/c2-75.html http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/html/c2-75.h...
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    Which is currently driven up in price by cheap money that has nowhere else to go for safe yields (after the stock collapse in '00 and the real estate collapse of '08). http://giannini.ucop.edu/media/are-update/files/articles/V15N1_3.pdf http://giannini.ucop.edu/media/are-update/files/articles/V15...

netcan 12y ago

There may be a bias in the scale making the rural-city divide look worse than it is. Rural areas are often cheaper, so the median income could represent more purchasing power. Also a bachelor’s degree here is used as an indicator/measure. In some places these are less valued and relevant to employment as others. Every basket of measures is imperfect and I quite like the ones used here (education, income, unemployment, disability, life expectancy and obesity), but there probably are some weird biases someplace.