Public lands and rural economies

Over spring break, I took a short trip to Yosemite National Park and hiked the Upper Falls trail. As I made my way up the trail I was struck by the natural beauty of the park and also a sense of gratitude that our society has undertaken the difficult task of facilitating access to these places.

Half Dome and Yosemite Falls from Upper Falls Trail. Source: Chris Hayward (2026)

Something about a well maintained trail thousands of feet up the side of a cliff-face feels just as impressive as massive public works projects like dams and highways, and for good reason. Maintenance of the type of tourism economy generated by our National Parks is a staggering task that is largely undertaken by rural communities surrounding them.

The economic benefits of public lands

The National Park Service manages 17,000 miles of trails across the nation, along with 5,500 miles of paved road, and 25,000 buildings that are in need of constant maintenance and repair. This effort provides massive returns for the U.S. economy that have grown in recent years, as has interest in outdoor recreational activities. In 2024, outdoor recreation activities accounted for 2.4% of GDP. As a proportion of America’s GDP, outdoor recreation is now three times larger than air transport or auto manufacturing, twice as large as agriculture, and larger than oil and gas development. This revenue is especially important in rural states like Montana and Wyoming, where outdoor recreation accounts for at least 4.7% of GDP. In 2024, national parks alone accounted for $56.3 billion in output, 340,000 jobs, and $29 billion for local gateway regions.

The economic benefits of a National Park are nearly immediately apparent in local communities. One study estimated that designation of a National Park causes a 4% increase in employment and a 5% increase in income in communities near national parks within four years of a park being designated. Public lands attract high-wage job opportunities in areas like forestry management and infrastructure maintenance, while generating investment and revenue for local businesses.

Snow, a resident of Priest, CA, relies on tourism to Yosemite for attention. Source: Chris Hayward (2026)

Another study by Headwaters Economics examined the effect of public lands (not limited to the National Park Service) on surrounding communities and found that it provided massive benefits. The study compared the population growth, employment, personal income, and per capita income in western non-metro counties with the top 25th and bottom 25th percentiles of proportion of federal land. Headwaters found that these economic indicators grew two times faster or more in non-metro counties with the highest share of federal lands, though there was a smaller increase in per capita income.

 

Graphic courtesy of Megan Lawson, Ph.D., at Headwater Economics (2017)

The Trump administration and national parks

Despite longstanding bipartisan support for the National Park system, the Trump administration has launched an attack on the Park Service in very classically Trump manner; by slashing funding while politicizing National Parks however possible.

The Trump administration recently cancelled free admission to national parks on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and on Juneteenth, while instead instituting free admission on his own birthday. As an additional insertion of “culture war” politics into national parks, the Trump administration has removed or censored exhibits discussing slavery, LGBTQ history, Native American expulsion from national narks, and climate change. Further, the Trump administration implemented a $100 per person additional fee for non-residents on top of existing fees for 11 popular national parks, including Yosemite.

Bridalveil Falls Source: Chris Hayward (2026)

In addition to these attacks on the inclusivity and historical accuracy of national parks, the Trump administration has made a series of more concrete attempts to gut the National Park System. In the first half of 2025 alone, 24% of National Park Service employees were fired, resigned, or otherwise departed the agency. The Trump administration has significantly increased logging, oil drilling, and coal mining on federal land, while ignoring National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Endangered Species Act (ESA) requirements.

Continued support for national parks

While national parks are under attack by the Trump administration, public support for the national parks remains strong. The National Park Service is the most popular agency in the federal government, with 78% of Republicans and 79% of Democrats viewing it favorably. There has even been bipartisan pushback on the Trump administration’s attempts to gut the National Park System.

In the summer of 2025, a Trump backed provision intended to sell off large portions of public land introduced by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) as part of the “Big Beautiful Bill” was withdrawn after it drew strong backlash, even from other Republican members of Congress. Similarly, the Trump administration’s proposed 37% reduction in the National Park Service’s 2026 budget was rejected by the Senate.

Conclusions

While public support for our national parks remains strong, the Trump administration has still managed to do significant harm in 15 short months since he returned to office. Many are concerned that the extreme volatility of the administration may have irreversibly damaged the institutional knowledge of the National Park Service. Rebuilding the expertise of our federal agencies will be an extremely long and difficult task, but so was the effort to protect and maintain these places in the first place. Thankfully, even many Republicans see value in our parks, even if only for the benefits they provide to rural communities. 

Energy poverty burdens rural America, especially as the climate warms

Mt. Sherman, Arkansas 

Credit: Lisa R. Pruitt, 2009

Rural areas produce much of the energy that our nation relies on. Sixty percent of coal plants are located in rural areas, and 83% of wind, solar and geothermal energy is produced in rural regions. Even so, families living in poverty in rural areas are more likely to experience energy poverty. Energy poverty is the inability to pay utility bills to heat or cool a home. A report by the Island Institute explained that the median energy burden (percent of income spent on energy bills) is 33% higher for rural households than the national median. 

Inability to pay for utilities can increase exposure to heat or cold, leading to various health risks such as respiratory issues, heart problems, allergies, and kidney disorders. Climate change has exacerbated exposure risks due to the greater frequency of extreme weather conditions.

Rural areas face these energy inequities because of rising energy costs and a lack of investment. Across the country, residential electricity costs have increased 30% since 2021 and residential gas costs have increased 40% since 2019. The geographic isolation of many rural areas makes it more expensive to deliver energy and provide energy efficiency upgrades. 

Investor-owned utilities in the early twentieth century didn't want to provide the same service in rural areas as in urban areas because the lower population densities in rural areas made profits too low to justify construction and investment. In 1935, the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) was created. The REA utilized a "rural cooperative model" which allowed for publicly owned and controlled electricity. While this cooperative model has some benefits, rural cooperatives often lack capacity and resources to invest in more comprehensive energy efficiency programs. 

Additionally, rural areas are more likely to have older homes with worse insulation. In addition to houses being older, 20% of rural households live in manufactured homes (commonly called mobile homes), which are significantly less energy efficient and more costly to repair than traditional housing. 

AC Unit on Mobile Home

Credit: Creative Commons

How do we currently address energy poverty?

The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) is a federally funded program that provides assistance to low-income households who face a high energy burden. Assistance can range from one-time financial assistance to free energy efficiency upgrades. A study done by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) found that weatherizing a home for families living at or below 200% of the federal poverty line can save an average singe family household $283. These savings are even greater for those living in manufactured homes per year and manufactured homes, at $458 per year.

Katrina Metzler from National Energy and Utility Affordability Coalition explained that rural areas have a harder time accessing LIHEAP benefits because the resources are not centralized as they are in urban areas. A 2024 survey found that only 17% of households that qualify for LIHEAP assistance utilize the program. 

LIHEAP's funding formula has historically provided more funding to cold-weather states. But climate change has caused a shift in the historical energy burden being faced by rural communities. Extreme heat is now the primary cause of weather-related deaths, with 2,302 heat-related deaths in 2023. This is a 44% increase from 2021. With rising temperature, regions such as the South and Southwest have greater cooling needs, while the heating needs in regions such as the North and Northwest have become less extreme. 

LIHEAP is still using a funding formula from the 1980s to determine how funding is distributed to states. With the changing climate, it may be time to shift the funding formula to better aid states struggling with extreme heat. 

Credit: ACEEE

What are states doing?

Nine states have implemented percentage-of-income payment plans (PIPPs). This type of program caps energy bills at a specified percentage of household income for low-income customers. Fourteen states provide low-income households energy at a discounted rate to keep costs low.

Additionally, 10 states offer arrearage management plans, which forgive a portion of debt for each timely payment of a new bill. This helps to defeat the energy bill debt cycle that many households in energy poverty face. One missed payment can turn into growing debt that threatens disconnection from service, forcing households to pursue risky options such as emergency aid or high-cost loans. 

The Rocky Mountain Institute modeled the cost of a universal PIPP, capping bills at 4% of annual income. They determined it would cost only $9.3 billion to fund this program, 0.14% of federal spending in 2024.

In 2024, Congress appropriated $4.125 billion in LIHEAP funding. Last April, the Trump administration sought to completely cut funding for LIHEAP, but full funding was eventually included in the appropriations package passed in February of this year.

LIHEAP is an essential program to ensure that rural households have some assistance with the crushing costs of utilities. Implementation of PIPPs, ideally at the federal level, could drastically reduce the burdens of energy costs on low-income rural families and prevent them from having to choose between buying food or having air conditioning during severe heat. 

The dual edge of isolation: escaping to and surviving in rural Alaska

Looking at the shore off a cruise ship,
Alaska. Photo credit: Anna Tong (2012)

When I was 12 years old, I went on an Alaskan Cruise. Our cruise stopped in Juneau, Ketchikan, Skagway, Sitka, and Haines. While in Ketchikan, a tour guide showed us around town and talked about what it is like to live in Alaska. My cousins and I asked the tour guide what they like to do for fun in Alaska. He replied that many locals enjoy nature, go fishing, and hunt.

When we asked about movie theaters and TV shows, he mentioned that the town didn’t have a theater, and many locals lacked televisions or internet access. As teenagers, we contemplated at the thought of being so disconnected. While I could not imagine myself living in Alaska, this is the reality for some.

It made me wonder, who would live in Alaska? The Census Reporter estimates that Alaska’s current population is just above 740,000 with a predominantly white population (57%), and Native Alaskans (13%) representing the next highest percentage. While the population seems to be increasing, the working-age population is declining.

Tourists visiting Nugget Falls in Juneau, Alaska. Photo Credit: Anna Tong (2012)

Alaska has long captured the American imagination as the ultimate frontier for a fresh start. The state actively incentivizes newcomers through the Permanent Fund Dividend, which pays residents simply for living there for a calendar year. Beyond financial perks, the profound remoteness of the state offers a unique social refuge. People fleeing restrictive pasts (such as having a criminal record) often migrate to the state specifically because of its remote nature and anti-establishment culture.

For some, this seclusion provides a necessary second chance. J.T. Perkins III tells a reporter for The Marshall Project about how he recommends for someone with a criminal record to flee to Alaska to avoid restrictive public registries and social stigma. J.T. also describes the community created within insolation fosters an environment where neighbors judge each other by current actions rather than past mistakes. However, this "leave me alone" culture has a devastatingly dark side for vulnerable populations.

While property crime in the state has dropped to its lowest levels since 1985, violent crime remains staggeringly high. The Alaska Beacon discusses how Alaska’s rates of violent offenses have outpaced the national average since 1993, driven heavily by very high rates of rape and aggravated assault. In fact, the rate of reported rape in Alaska has consistently hovered between three and four times the national average for the last decade according to the Alaska Beacon. The Alaska Justice Information Center also reported in 2021 on the FBI's Uniform Crime Report comparing Alaska's rates to rates nationwide. It is no surprise that the crime rates in Alaska are so bad considering the lack of law enforcement (read more about that in an earlier blog post here).

This social crisis is compounded by a severe lack of public infrastructure, another direct consequence of rural isolation. NPR investigated the conditions of rural schools in Alaska. Because shipping heavy equipment and housing skilled workers is astronomically expensive, basic maintenance of schools are frequently abandoned by the Alaskan government. As a result, rural Alaska Native communities are left with schools that are literally collapsing into the permafrost, filled with black mold and structural hazards. 

This structural neglect extends to basic household utilities, with more than 200 rural Alaskan communities currently facing inadequate access to water. Residents without piped water are forced to survive on less than six liters a day, severely impacting public health.

Conclusion
Ultimately, the isolation of rural Alaska acts as a double-edged sword. It functions as a hiding place for social outsiders or people with a criminal record who are seeking to relocate, while simultaneously trapping its marginalized residents in a cycle of violent crime and infrastructural decay. 

Reflecting back on that cruise I was on in 2012, it’s wild to think that my biggest concern was just a lack of internet or a local movie theater. I was completely blind to the harsh realities of what extreme isolation means for the people living there.

On town hobbies and country hobbies

  On my way to go shoot trap, sometime in 2024, somewhere in Colorado 

 

I spend a lot of time outdoors and in rural locales for my hobbies. I shoot a great deal of trap, and hike even more. Despite the common belief that fresh mountain air and the cool ocean breeze would be just what the doctor would prescribe, I would not say that these rural hobbies are good for my health. Between the lead exposure, my ever increasing appetite for nicotine that perks up only outdoors, and my increasingly protestant knees and hips, I would say that overall it's actually quite the opposite.

Upper Yosemite Falls, Yosemite, 2024 

Much has been written on this blog about the rates of firearm ownership and hunting in rural localities (Read more here and here respectively). Despite high rates of participation in these forms of recreation, participation in other forms of physical activity are in decline. (Physical activity is defined by another study). 

Anecdotally, I have spent some time in a hunting blind and did not move more than ten meters in a 48-hour timespan once we were established. If rural hobbies are more commonly sedentary or, at least less physically active than urban hobbies, this may partially explain the higher rural rates of certain health disorders related to sedentary lifestyles. It seems, then, that there is a rural/urban health divide when it comes to hobbies.

This hobby health divide is aggravated by the fact that some rural hobbies may even be dangerous to their participants. Lead exposure is a common issue amongst recreational shooters. Any personal injury attorney or orthopedic surgeon can give you horrific war stories about the dangers of ATV and dirtbike riding (Here's a forthcoming study from the University of California, Davis). Municipal laws that allow for the burning of wood campfires impact particulate concentrations in the air, only one degree upstream of increased rates of asthma and other respiratory illnesses (Read the EPA warning here). All three of these hobbies (still necessities for some), hunting (read more here), ATV/dirtbike riding, wood burning stoves correlate to rural areas.

I believe this disparity in health reflects tension in either the health benefits of the hobbies available to rural/urban denizens, or the accessibility of health beneficial hobbies to rural residents. Even outdoors biking or jogging requires specific accommodating infrastructure, such as bicycling or walking paths. These activities may be impossible or at least unsafe in car centric rural areas. I am unsure of any potential solutions to this divide. Any sort of increased regulation on dangerous hobbies is likely seen as paternalistic, a stance already disfavoured in rural places. Rural folks may see such infrastructure as an urban affront to rural practicality. 

One potential investment that could increase rural population health is that of encouraging youth athletic participation. This may happen at the municipal or state level via increased funding of sports fields and competitions. Suburban children participate in sports longer and earlier than rural children. Studies on public health indicate that these sports can have positive downstream effects on adulthood health. By increasing the already high rural participation in youth sports, rural populations may be induced to be healthier as they age if they keep participating in these recreational activities. 

On the way to Lake Hensley, California, 2025

Additionally, wooded areas and pools of water are still required to fish and hunt. What happens where there is no infrastructure at all for any type of recreation?  Public health studies have documented the higher rates of drug and alcohol use in rural and poorer areas. There are less studies on specifically the proliferation of drug use given a lack of recreation, but it's not hard to imagine a correlation there. Consider the old adage of, "idle hands are the devil's workshop."

I'll close with a personal anecdata point. In my mind’s eye, I am in a rural part of Manitoba. The municipality is landlocked. The altitude in the area varies not more than 20 meters. The highest point is a landfill lovingly called garbage hill hours away in the city of Winnipeg. In the winter, the average temperature is -19C and the lakes and streams freeze over. There are no oceans or mountains to escape to. I asked my friend from there what there is to do. He shrugs, and we very quickly got drunk.

    Elk on the way to Point Reyes, California, October 2025

Burning down the house: California’s fire insurance crisis

California residents have become accustomed to historically large wildfires occurring at an astonishing pace, with eight of the ten largest fires ever recorded in California occurring in the last 10 years. The increasing frequency and destructiveness of wildfires has strained fire insurance systems to a near breaking point, and rural communities are often the most impacted by both wildfires and rising insurance costs.

Fire danger sign on scorched ground outside Klamath. Image source: National Interagency Fire Center

A primer on California’s FAIR Plan

California’s FAIR Plan, commonly referred to as the “insurer of last resort,” was created by the California Legislature in 1968 to act as a temporary safety net for homeowners who were unable to find home insurance from regular providers. Unlike a typical home insurance plan, the FAIR Plan only covers fire damage to structures, not household goods or personal liability. Contrary to public perception, the FAIR Plan is not a state funded insurer. The FAIR Plan is instead a state managed insurance pool comprised of all private insurers licensed to conduct business in California.

When FAIR Plan premiums fail to cover their exposure, the California Insurance Commissioner may levy assessments of up to a total of $1 billion per year (gross, not per insurer) against private insurers based on the market share of these insurers. Ostensibly, private insurers are not permitted to pass the costs of these assessments along to their ratepayers without approval from the Insurance Commissioner.

Trends in FAIR Plan usage

FAIR Plan usage has grown significantly in recent years. In 2009, only 7% of California ZIP codes had FAIR Plan policies that accounted for more than 10% of policies in that ZIP code. By 2022, this was true of 22% of California ZIP codes. FAIR Plan usage tends to be much higher in rural areas, as demonstrated by the below map, published by Avery Bick and Nam Nguyen in this post.



To select a few extreme examples from this map, one ZIP code located in Placer County where the largest community, Foresthill, has a population of 1692, has a FAIR Plan rate of 69.625%. Another ZIP code in Orange county has a FAIR Plan rate of 79.67%, and their largest community, Silverado, has a population of only 932.

While the FAIR Plan was not intended to insure such a large proportion of California’s residents, the reason why that trend is unfolding is quite clear: private insurers are fleeing the state as fast as they can. State Farm (still the largest insurer in California) and Allstate stopped writing new homeowner fire policies in 2022. A series of other large insurers left the state in the following years, with Nationwide, Farmers, Travelers, Tokio, and American National all ceasing to write new policies from 2023-2025.

As FAIR Plan usage has expanded, premiums for FAIR Plan policies have also increased significantly, with some consumers seeing rate increases (rarely) as high as 300% in a single year. While the average FAIR Plan policy costs around $3,200 per year, it is common for policies to cost more than $10,000 per year in high fire risk areas.

Why has rural California been hit so hard by the insurance crisis?

The reason that this crisis has hit rural California particularly hard is relatively intuitive. As phrased by Prof. Minnich of UC Riverside, “People want to live with nature, but they don’t recognize that nature is explosively flammable.”

Housing in wildland urban interface (WUI) areas is much more prone to fire damage. Defined commonly as an area where urban development mingles with undeveloped wildland vegetation, WUI overlaps significantly with areas typically considered rural, but it may also include development on the outskirts of urban centers.

Residential development in WUI is the fastest growing land use type in the United States, with the number of houses in WUI increasing by 46% from 1990 to 2020. California has seen the greatest increase of houses in WUI, with one third of California households in WUI as of 2020. Note the striking resemblance that the below map of change in WUI in California, published by Prof. Miriam Greenberg in this article, bears to the above map of FAIR Plan coverage rates.



The increasing number of houses in high fire risk areas coupled with more frequent and destructive fires have proved a hurdle that insurers are often unable to clear without substantial premium increases.

The future of the FAIR Plan

Increased reliance on the FAIR Plan, along with massive exposure from the Palisades and Eaton fires has led Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara to levy the first assessment against FAIR Plan member companies since 1994. The assessment is for the full $1 billion allowed. 

Additionally, Commissioner Lara mandated the use of wildfire catastrophe models in FAIR Plan's most recent rate increase application. The rate increase currently proposed would average a 35.8% increase, with about half of policyholders seeing an increase between 40% and 50%.

In addition to these efforts by the Department of Insurance, a variety of legislative measures have been passed or proposed to address California's insurance crisis. One of the most notable among these is Assemblymember Lisa Calderon's (D, 56th District) AB 1680, which seeks to overhaul the FAIR Plan in a number of ways, perhaps most significantly by extending FAIR Plan coverage to water damage, personal injury liability, and other coverages typical of standard home insurance policies. 

Conclusions

These and other measures taken by California in response to the Palisades and Eaton fire make clear that policymakers know action is needed, but there is little doubt that they are inadequate. While efforts to mitigate the costs to FAIR Plan policyholders are important, California's insurance crisis is inherent in our homebuilding choices and lack of adequate wildfire hardening. As previous blog posts have noted, wildfire prevention efforts in rural areas of California are severely underfunded. Without serious efforts to mitigate wildfire risk, California is unlikely to halt the exodus of private insurers. 

Literary Ruralism (Part LI): Attention to "rural" in Dan Wang's Breakneck, on China's rise

Breakneck:  China's Quest to Engineer the Future by technology analyst Dan Wang was published last month by W.W. Norton.  The promotional blurb touts the book, in part, thusly:  

Wang blends political, economic, and philosophical analysis with reportage to reveal a provocative new framework for understanding China—one that helps us see America more clearly, too. While China is an engineering state, relentlessly pursuing megaprojects, the United States has stalled. America has transformed into a lawyerly society, reflexively blocking everything, good and bad.

I came to the book after listening to Ross Douthat's interview with Wang on the "Interesting Times" podcast.  While Wang's book primarily contrasts the differing approaches to development and infrastructure of the United States and China, it often raises the matter of rural-urban difference and how those differences play out in the two countries.  I was intrigued, for example, by Douthat's comparison of Guizhou, a backwater Chinese province that Wang uses to illustrate an underdeveloped place, to West Virginia.  The transcript from the podcast features this from Wang: 

Guizhou... is a land where a local said, “Not three feet of land is flat, not three days go by without rain and not a family has three silver coins.”  China’s fourth-poorest province, I was surprised to see, had much better levels of infrastructure than one could find in much wealthier places in the United States, like New York State or California.

We saw very tall bridges all around us. We saw a guitar-making hub. We saw a lot of fancy new roads that were a cyclist’s dream. And it was only afterward when I realized how bizarre it was that China’s fourth-poorest province — about the level of G.D.P. per capita of Botswana, much less than Shanghai or Guangdong — was able to build all of these things.

It is a province with 11 airports, 50 of the highest bridges in the world and brand-new, spiffy highways — and that’s because China was just building a lot in its equivalent of a South Dakota or West Virginia.

That's a good introduction to the book excerpts that follow.  I have highlighted the word "rural" in context.  

Modern China has many tools of social control. Within living memory, most Chinese residents worked inside a danwei, or work unit, which governed one’s access to essentials like rice, meat, cooking oil, and a bicycle. Many people still live under the strictures of the hukou, or household registration, an aim of which is to prevent rural folks from establishing themselves in cities by restricting education and health care benefits to their hometown. Controls are far worse for ethnoreligious minorities: Tibetans are totally prohibited from worshipping the Dalai Lama, and perhaps over a million Uighurs have spent time in detention camps that attempt to inculcate Chinese values into their Muslim faith. 

The engineering state can be awfully literal minded. Sometimes, it feels like China’s leadership is made up entirely of hydraulic engineers, who view the economy and society as liquid flows, as if all human activity—from mass production to reproduction—can be directed, restricted, increased, or blocked with the same ease as turning a series of valves. (pp. 5-6)

* * * 

The Guizhou locals we chatted with were prouder of their bridges than anything else. My friends and I cycled across bridges that were set above plunging ravines. State media boasts that Guizhou has become a “museum of bridges,” a few of which are trying to develop into tourism sites: The tenth-highest bridge in Guizhou (which is twenty-third globally) hosts the world’s highest bungee jump. Each time the engineers build a bridge, they inevitably announce that travel times between two towns have been cut from many hours to perhaps a few minutes. That creates real convenience and connection for rural people. Some of these are bridges to nowhere, but after a few years, they become somewhere. 

(I am reminded of what a "bridge to nowhere" connotes in the United States; read some of my analysis of the political implications of the phenomenon here). 

Still, beneath Guizhou’s engineering marvels are counties mired in poverty. At $8,000 per capita, the province has the income of Botswana, 40 percent below China’s national average and less than a third that of rich coastal cities like Beijing and Shanghai. One day, Christian remarked on how few working-age adults we saw in Guizhou: Those who don’t have a job making guitars have mostly migrated to other provinces, leaving small children in the care of grandparents. In 2010, only half of Guizhou’s children attended high school—the lowest rate in the country. News reports often featured stories of children having to rise at the crack of dawn and hike through harrowing mountain paths, some with rope ladders, to be able to attend school. 

In spite of the challenges of deep rural isolation, China’s fourth-poorest province—where household income is one-fifteenth that of New York State—has vastly superior infrastructure: three times the length of New York’s highways, as well as a functional high-speed rail network. And Guizhou isn’t exactly an exceptional Chinese province. Across the country, the engineering state has relentlessly built public works, making Guizhou an extreme case of China’s growth strategy rather than a deviation from it. 

Modern China has been on a building spree. It began in the 1990s, after economic reopening took hold, and then received another boost in 2008, when the central government approved vast public works to respond to the global financial crisis. (pp. 27-28)

* * * 

The Fourteenth Five-Year Plan outlines interstellar research and other state-directed megaprojects. There’s something for the ordinary consumer too, but it’s nowhere near as exciting. To promote consumption, the plan suggests measures like “expanding the coverage of e-commerce in rural areas,” “improving product recalls,” and “improving in-city duty-free shops.” Fine measures, but puny relative to orbiting Mars. The economic planners have obviously poured their hearts into the scientific projects, whereas the consumption measures look like a hasty afterthought. When Chinese officials talk about promoting consumption, it often involves building new malls or replacing old industrial equipment. In other words, it’s still more about investing to build stuff rather than shifting the propensity of households to spend a greater share of their income. 

Under Mao, China practiced a more literal form of Marxism, with full state control of the means of production. Deng Xiaoping pivoted the country away from that failed experiment. As Deng was fond of remarking, the defining feature of socialism was not economic redistribution but rather “concentrating resources to accomplish great tasks.” That flexible definition allowed for greater adaptability, generated higher growth, and sustained the regime into the twenty-first century. Under Deng’s definition, the United States has also achieved plenty of socialism. The Manhattan Project, the Interstate Highway System, and the Apollo Program all concentrated resources to accomplish great tasks. Maybe even Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative could have been understood as socialism. When the engineering state works, it can produce beautiful cities like Shanghai. But Shanghai is exceptional: It has been China’s richest and most westernized city for the better part of a century. The engineering state also produces a lot of problems. To see them, we should return one more time to Guizhou. 

Under the gleaming new bridges lurk not only poverty but also a massive debt burden. The underlying hope of Guizhou’s construction is that infrastructure will invite lasting economic activity. Part of that has worked out: Guizhou incomes have risen by nearly 10 percent annually from 2011 to 2022, driven partially by urbanization and by the tourism facilitated by new infrastructure.  (pp. 37-38)

* * *  

But most of Guizhou’s infrastructure spending looks dubious. Its super-high bridges aren’t producing the revenue to recoup anywhere near their super-high costs. Of Guizhou’s eleven airports, five have less than a dozen flights each week—and there are three more airports still under construction. Guizhou has become one of China’s most indebted provinces, and it’s starting to feel real fiscal distress. In an unusual move, Guiyang’s finance bureau issued a public outcry in 2022 that it was at the end of its ability to deal with the debt. Quickly afterward, the government deleted its own admission. 

Guizhou’s debt has kindled Beijing’s wrath. In China, the only people scarier than debt collectors are political inspectors from the central government. The Communist Party has unleashed teams of officers from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection to descend on Guizhou. They are unbound by even the modest levels of legal niceties afforded in China. Rather than investigating legal crimes, their remit is to find “violations of party discipline,” a nebulous charge that includes not only corruption but also misuse of public funds and political disloyalty to the Communist Party. That makes the commission akin to the Inquisition, enforcing doctrine and discipline on its members. (pp. 38-39) 

The worst-affected people are targeted minority groups, who have to bear Beijing’s social engineering. The state has singled out, for example, Tibetans, who are forced to relocate from high-altitude mountains, where they are able to graze their yaks and horses, to lower-altitude farms in part to monitor them more easily. What are yak herders supposed to do when they move down to apartment blocks? Rural people who know only their farming or pastoralist lives are often at loose ends when the government resettles them into rows upon rows of high-rises. Two researchers at the University of Colorado have documented China’s coercive tactics to compel locals to leave their homes. It is a process it calls “thought work,” ranging from presenting resettlement as a voluntary and happy choice to holding intensive one-on-one meetings with recalcitrant folks who do not want to leave. Officials mix inducements with threats until they wear down the farmers. Thus, the state has been able to achieve “voluntary” resettlement rates of 100 percent. 

Reckless construction has often produced rubbish quality. Builders employed cheap materials to construct even schoolhouses. The 2008 earthquake that tore through Sichuan also shattered thousands of schoolrooms, killing five thousand children (according to official figures).  (pp. 48-49)

* * * 

Though rich students in Shanghai score splendidly on international exams, education in China’s rural areas is still often abysmal. The Covid pandemic revealed that the country’s health care system is weak, with shortages of doctors and nurses and six times fewer intensive care unit beds per capita than in the United States. An official like Li Zaiyong might be more interested in building a gleaming hospital filled with sophisticated equipment. Their attention drifts, however, when it comes to installing the trained technicians capable of operating the facility, since the Communist Party is better at rewarding new construction than health outcomes. 

The engineering state is focused mostly on monumentalism. Though there are many public toilets, provision of toilet paper is only a sometimes thing. Nowhere in China is it advisable to drink tap water. Not even Shanghai. The engineering state has engaged in wild spasms of building over the past four decades. That has achieved considerable wonders and a fair degree of harm. The future would be better if China could learn to build less, while the United States learns to build more.

I’ve come to realize that there are many ways that China and the United States are inversions of each other.  (pp. 49-50) 

* * * 

China’s overbuilding has produced deep social, financial, and environmental costs. The United States has no need to emulate it uncritically. But the Chinese experience does offer political lessons for America. China has shown that financial constraints are less binding than they are cracked up to be. As John Maynard Keynes said, “Anything we can actually do we can afford.” For an infrastructure-starved place like the United States, construction can generate long-run gains from higher economic activity that eventually surpass the immediate construction costs. And the experience of building big in underserved places is a means of redistribution that makes locals happy while satisfying fiscal conservatives who are normally skeptical of welfare payments. 

Rather than worry about bond vigilantes, the engineering state has focused on delivering material improvements for the people. Rural folks in Guizhou have seen their material conditions of life improve immeasurably over the past few decades. The mixture of permitting free enterprise while building big infrastructure is part of the reason that the Communist Party has held on to consent of the governed.  (p. 54) 

I'll write a separate post later about the rural-urban divide in relation to China's one-child policy.  

Japan erects--overnight--a 3-D printed train station for a rural community

Kiuko Notoya recently reported in the New York Times about the overnight construction of a train station in rural western Japan.  The components were 3-D printed elsewhere.  According to the West Japan Railway Company that serves this place, Hatsushima (near Arida, in Wakayama prefecture) building a station the old-fashioned way would have cost twice as much and taken more than two months.  The station is served by one train line, which runs between one and three times per hour; it serves about 530 riders each day. The new train station, which looks more like a shed or a shelter, was erected between the time the last train ran at 11:57 pm one evening and the first train train the next morning at 5:45 am.  The 100 square foot building is described as "a minimalistic, white building, featuring designs that include a mandarin orange and a scabbardfish, specialties of Arida."

Notoya writes:  

In the six hours between the departure of the night’s last train and the arrival of the morning’s first one, workers in rural Japan built an entirely new train station. It will replace a significantly bigger wooden structure that has served commuters in this remote community for over 75 years.

* * * 

As Japan’s population ages and its work force shrinks, the maintenance of railway infrastructure, including outdated station buildings, is a growing issue for railway operators. Rural stations with dwindling numbers of users have posed a particular challenge. 

The NYT story, which includes several short videos of the production process for the train station parts and the building's erection, is worth a read in its entirety.   

The rise of the "barndominium" and the "shouse"

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, migration to rural areas has substantially increased. From 2019 to 2023, large urban areas like New Orleans and Cleveland experienced smaller population growth than average as many city dwellers moved to rural and rural adjacent places. The loosening of in-person work requirements likely played a large role in this migration to rural areas.

Theoretically, the pandemic's resolution and subsequent return to in-person work should have ended the rural migration trend, yet many Americans are still trading city life for country living. For instance, as of late 2024, young families with children were increasingly leaving big cities, opting instead for rural counties and small metropolitan areas. 

The benefits of living in the country are somewhat obvious. Cities tend to come with a higher cost of living, overwhelmed public school systems, higher rates of crime, and greater environmental pollution. This reality, combined with a rising cultural appreciation for the countryside aesthetic, has set the stage for homeowners to embrace a lesser-known phenomenon: the "barndominium."

Picture this: 14 acres in the middle of nowhere, abundant open space, and the opportunity to design your own home at a far lower cost than purchasing a traditional house. For people like the Barndominium Lady Stacey Lynn Bell, who built her dream barndominium and now helps others do the same, the appeal is irresistible. In a recent New York Times article reporting on the barndo's surge in popularity, Bell explained that: 

More people want bigger homes, more distant neighbors, land to raise chickens and grow vegetables, and an environment 'not as hustle-bustle.'

In the same piece, Brittany VanHouten shared that she and her husband expect their barndominium in Citrus County, Florida to be 4,500 square feet and include a home theater, library, craft room, and spacious detached garage, once finished. The Florida couple estimated their new home would cost under $300,000, which falls on the lower end of the average price to build a home in their area.

On top of all these advantages, barndominiums are often disaster-resilient, long-lasting, and energy-efficient. This is largely due to their slow-to-rust steel frames and customary metal roofs, which can withstand high winds and hurricanes. Pertinently, climate and disaster-resilient features are "very important" to 86% of homebuyers, according to a recent Zillow survey.

Of course, the barndominium has its disadvantages, too. As with rural living in general, taking up residence on vast open land may mean sacrificing easy access to schools, places of employment, restaurants, and shopping centers. 

A partial remedy to this problem is the shouse, an even more niche category of housing also taking over rural America. The term "shouse" is derived from a combination of "shop" and "house." While the shouse is extremely barndo-esque, it provides the additional option of allowing owners to combine their living space with their workshop. This feature virtually eliminates commute time, unless you count the time it takes to walk from one room to another.

Further, while a greater emphasis on function over form renders shouses somewhat less cosmetically appealing than their barndo counterparts, these structures share many of the same advantages, including lower costs and energy efficiency. 

If migration trends over the last few years are predictive of those to come, rural areas are likely to continue to experience an influx of new residents from bigger cities. Unfortunately, housing prices have already begun to increase in smaller towns and rural areas due to this shift. However, for those with the resources, patience, and vision, a barndominium or a shouse might allow potential homebuyers to make their rural dreams a rural reality.

Amid mass layoffs in the National Park Service, rural communities could be some of the first to suffer.

 On February 14th, 2025, the Trump administration fired 1,000 National Park Service (NPS) employees and several times that number of U.S. Forest Service employees. These terminations came in the wake of a federal hiring freeze for full and part-time positions with the NPS.

While the Department of the Interior recently exempted 5,000 seasonal workers from the hiring freeze, this represents only a portion of the estimated 7,500 part-time employees NPS hires to help manage the hectic spring and summer. It is unclear if these 5,000 positions will have to be re-advertised and whether early applicants will have to re-apply; if they do, it could result in substantial hiring delays, stretching the NPS' already thin resources even further during peak season. 

The NPS has funding for "about 13,000 full-time employees nationwide," according to their website, and some of these jobs are already unfilled. The full-time layoffs thus represent the elimination of nearly 1/10th of NPS positions. Additionally, the full-time hiring freeze also affects incoming NPS rangers, with those about to begin training having job offers rescinded as of January 27th. This contradicted previous statements from the Trump Administration that law enforcement personnel would not be affected by federal layoffs.

Theresa Pierno, President and CEO for the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) said in a Feb. 14th press release that the administration's actions will have "devastating consequences for parks and communities," warning that larger parks could lose key staff and smaller parks risk closing their doors altogether. Former NPS director Jonathan Jarvis said in a statement to the National Parks Traveler that the layoffs would cause "chaos," leaving visitors unsatisfied and at potentially serious risk. Search-and-rescue crews, firefighters, and emergency medical service positions are often filled by seasonal workers.

As both Pierno and Jarvis noted, however, it is not just visitors and employees who will be affected by these policies. A 2019 study from headwaterseconomics.org shows 224 rural counties (16.8% of all counties defined as rural by the census bureau) have recreation-dependent economies. Many of these counties are contiguous with national parks or forests and rely heavily on visitors to stimulate local businesses. (You can read more about rural recreation economies and ecotourism on the blog here).

Although rural recreation economies are often linked with gentrification, there may be some advantages to this model. Rural recreation counties saw more post-pandemic job growth than other rural counties, although this varied slightly from region to region. Rural recreation counties were identified as significantly less likely to experience population loss than non-recreation counties. They were also found to have more food-away-from-home (FAFH) outlets per 1,000 people than metropolitan counties, according to a 2019 study by the USDA, Economic Research Service and the University of Arkansas. 

To help support these recreation economies, the EPA formed the Recreation Economy for Rural Communities (RERC) in 2019. This program establishes 'steering committees' designed to work closely with rural communities, providing locally tailored workshops and guidance and helping to ensure "equitable access to the outdoors for residents and visitors alike." Partner communities have been established in 16 states, primarily in counties adjacent to or contiguous with a national park, forest, or monument. 

 The federal hiring freeze is very likely to negatively impact rural recreation economies. It is unclear whether programs like the RERC will survive, and as parks become more difficult to operate, tourists are likely to be less satisfied. They may withdraw from or lash out at surrounding communities. A 2023 National Park Visitor Spending Effects survey found that 325.5 million visitors spent $26.4 billion in communities near national parks, providing 415,400 jobs, $19.4 billion in labor income, and $55.6 billion in economic output overall. 

Ms. Pierno emphasized that slashing staff would have a devastating ripple effect on businesses and communities that depend on parks for their survival. With the summer rush mere months away, many of these communities will have already invested in new infrastructure to support the influx of tourists. If that influx doesn't materialize, they face unprecedented revenue loss. 

UPDATE 5/4/2025: Federal District Judge William Alsup ordered federal agencies to rehire tens of thousands of probationary employees, including NPS workers. The NPS initially reinstated probationary employees fired by the Trump administration, but a Supreme Court order issued in April temporarily paused Alsup's order, suggesting the probationary workers should not be reinstated and that the firings are legal. 

The federal funding freeze forecasts uncertainty for rural farmers and communities

Over the past month, President Trump's administration has been characterized by chaos and his actions have left just about everyone disoriented. Confusion intensifies as to what the future has in store, and the federal funding freeze is no exception. On January 27, 2025, the Office of Management and Budget released an administrative order freezing federal grants and loans. This sparked public outrage from recipients scared of losing their jobs, educational funding, and livelihoods.

Although the order was rescinded only a few days after its implementation, and despite federal judges opposing the pause on funding, some government agencies are still withholding funding from those who need it. Troublingly, Vice President J.D. Vance chimed in on X regarding this battle between the executive and judicial branches, commenting, "[j]udges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power."

So, if you're wondering if there is a federal funding freeze currently, the answer seems to be that it depends on which government agency you're asking about. And if you're wondering whether there will be a federal funding freeze, that might depend on to what extent President Trump disregards the will of the federal courts.

In other words, who knows?

Unfortunately, the Trump administration's will-they-won't-they approach to the funding freeze has already begun impacting rural business owners, particularly farmers. 

For example, Hugh Lassen's family in Cherryfield, Maine, runs a small organic wild blueberry farm called Intervale Farm. The family shared with the Associated Press their worries that the pause on funding will keep them from receiving needed reimbursement for purchasing environmentally friendly equipment. Particularly, the Lassens spent $25,7000 on solar panels, a blueberry sorter, and 14 freezers under the impression they would receive an $8,000 grant through the Rural Energy for America Program. They now have no way of knowing whether they will get anything.

This uncertainty is only compounded by the reality that farmers are particularly vulnerable to unpredictable changes in the weather and shifts in the economy. Farmers' ability to earn a living can vary significantly year-to-year due to circumstances beyond their control, such as natural disasters or inflation. As such, rural farmers will disproportionately feel the impact of Trump's federal budget cuts.

On top of all those "typical" destabilizing forces, the looming threat of discontinued funding will not only hurt individual farmers, it will hurt rural economies. Rob Larew, a "sixth-generation farmer from West Virginia" writing for MSNBC, lays out numerous examples of the freeze's potential impacts. He argues that while the funding freeze has most immediately impacted "climate-smart agricultural projects," pushing rural families into bankruptcy will gut rural economies.

Larew forecasts a bleak future, where fewer farmers in rural areas will mean fewer families, and fewer families will result in "less money spent on local businesses, fewer kids in the local schools, and fewer tax dollars for roads, hospitals and emergency services." Further, Larew points out the potential ripple effects of a federal funding freeze, including disrupted market prices, limited food science research, fewer food safety inspectors, and an inability to maintain rural infrastructure. You can read more about issues relating to rural infrastructure here, here, and here.

One thing's for sure: The last thing small farmers need is more uncertainty. For now, however, uncertainty may be the only thing the Trump administration can guarantee business owners and farmers in rural communities. 

Australian state proposes student debt relief for lawyers willing to practice in rural places

"Bold new plan to get more lawyers to go to the bush," is the headline for this radio story by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation last week.  That "bold" plan involves helping lawyers pay their student loans if they're practicing in a rural, remote or regional area of Australia.  

Here's the promotional blurb: 

There's a dire shortage of lawyers in regional Australia and it's having devastating impacts on people’s everyday lives. One group is proposing a bold plan to try and entice lawyers to ditch the city and go bush. Brett McGrath is President of the Law Society of New South Wales and he tells ABC Newsradio’s Tom Oriti about how waiving student debt could make a big difference.

Here's a compelling excerpt from the interview, after the interviewee, Brett McGrath, notes the disparity between what solicitors can earn in the city and in the country: 

We have some solicitors in rural and regional New South Wales who are paying admin assistants more than they're paying themselves because they're trying to meet overheads week to week, and we are the most heavily regulated profession in the country.  We have ethical obligations.  We have reporting requirements.  And most [solicitors] are employing people.  They're employers so they have to go through workplace employment legislation.  They have all these obligations so they're really struggling to make  ends meet. ... 

I'm the President of the Law Society.  It took me seven years working full time in southwest Sydney and working as a lecturer at a university--so working a second job--it took me seven years to pay off A$40,000 in Hecs.  So you can imagine... A$70,000 is the average now... so with cost of living pressures and rental and all those sort of things... it's a big problem and that's why we think this is a solution that can address that need, particularly for rural and regional areas and make it really attractive for solicitors to come and set their practices up.  

Interviewer:  

If you're a lawyer who will go to the regions to help ease that shortage you'll get your HECS-help fees waived, and if you've already made contributions, they're refunded.  Is that right? 

McGrath:

So, it has its anchor point from the Commonwealth's own review into legal assistance which called for having solicitors who moved to rural, regional and remote areas as a baseline having 45% of their work legal aid work or they work for a Community Legal Centre ... We say that should be a baseline.  We think at the Law Society of New South Wales that should be taken to the next level because of what we're seeing on the ground in rural and regional areas of New South Wales but also across the country that it should be extended to anyone who wants to move to set their practice up and start their careers in regional areas should have their hex waived.  

There are similar schemes to attract teachers, to attract doctors and nurses to regional areas.... We see law and access to justice as a critical part of our infrastructure and services we provide.  

Lismore (New South Wales) is a great example where in disaster zones people are in trouble ... they reach out.  Who do they turn to?  They turn to their solicitor when they're in need. 

Interviewer: 

Have you put that [expensive proposal for debt relief] to the government?  Have you had any response? 

McGrath:  

We've suggested that it'll cost about A$6 million in the first year, and that's ... for the base program.  The first port of call is to have those with 45% of their work in legal aid and in Community Legal Centres so that's about A$6 million and we've put that to the federal government and the Law Council of Australia has ... put that forward as a proposal to the commonwealth.  

Interviewer:  

Any Response?  

McGrath:  

We're waiting on a response.  

California's Sacramento and San Joaquin Delta in the national news this week

Earlier this week, an episode of the New York Times podcast, The Daily, featured Solano County, California's rural reaches, including an area referred to as the Delta and specifically the town called RioVista.  The podcast is about Silicon Valley investors buying up land to build a new city, an enterprise now called California Forever.  I first wrote about the land purchases here and a student wrote this post a few weeks later.  

A day after that episode of The Daily, Here and Now, the syndicated news program by WBUR in Boston, featured a story about how Bay Area (California) artists and makers are moving to the same Delta region, where they find more affordable housing and a surprisingly welcoming community of locals.  

The Daily podcast is mostly an interview with NYT journalist Connor Doughterty, who broke the story about who was behind the land purchases in rural Solano County.  The reason I want to feature this podcast is to showcase the descriptions of rural people and their lifestyle, including their attachment to place, though that has little to do with what is suggested by the story's headline, "The Billionaires' Secret Plan to Solve California's Housing Crisis."  Here are some examples of what drew me to share the podcast, beginning with this description of the place the billionaires have been buying up: 

[I]magine you’re in San Francisco and you drive north further up into the Bay Area into an area called Solano County. And then you go way east and you end up in this very rural corner of the Bay Area that not a lot of people know about. And it’s over here, in this rural corner of Solano County, where our story takes place.

And it’s these open sort of rolling landscape of yellow hills with almost nothing on it. The largest structures there are wind turbines. And a lot of the families out there are farmers. They farm sheep, feed crops, and cows. And many of the people out there have been there since the 1860s.

This is a place where families stay in the same place for generations and pass the farms down several times. This is a place where not a lot changes, but then, in 2017, something very unusual starts to happen. A company called Flannery Associates, which nobody in the area has ever heard of, starts buying land.

And they buy more the next year, the year after that, the year after that, more and more and more and more, until pretty quickly they’re the biggest landowner in the entire county.  So all these neighbors are at supermarkets, they’re at church, they’re at schools. I mean, this is a place where everyone knows everyone.

They’re all on community boards together. They all talk to each other all the time. They all sort of simultaneously get these offers for their land.

Then there's this: 

[Dougherty:] So they not only want everyone’s farm, they start offering people these incredibly sweetheart deals, which say, OK, well, I’m going to buy your land, but you can stay there for the next decade or two, depending on how old they are. And for all that time, you can collect all the income from this land.

They don’t even want the income of the land. So one thing everyone realizes pretty quickly is, these people are not interested in farming.

Michael Barbaro [host] [LAUGHS]: Because if they wanted to farm, they would kick the farmers off the land they had just bought.

Dougherty:  Or they would want to make money from farming.

Barbaro:  Right.

Dougherty:  They don’t care about the price that reflects the income and they don’t even care about collecting the income. So they very obviously have a plan that has nothing to do with farming. And so the question is, what’s the plan? And who are these people?

The next step is to see if they can pass a local ballot initiative to get approval for California Forever: 

Solano County has a rule that says you can’t build in the rural areas, and that’s because they want to preserve these farms just as they’ve been for generations. So at the start of this year, California Forever filed a proposed ballot initiative that would undo that and pave the way for them to eventually build this city.

California Forever CEO Jan Sramek is now holding town hall meetings to try to convince voters to support the land use change.  Along Interstate 80 from Vallejo to Dixon, both cities in Solano County, one now sees California Forever billboards touting the jobs that will come with the new endeavor--and the annual salaries (in the six figures) associated with those jobs.  

And here's a November, 2023, story by KCRA out of Sacramento touting the first tour of the land Flannery Associates bought.  The report mentions the new community would "include open space, agriculture, solar farms, and habitat conservation." 

Here's another terrific quote from the January story by Doughterty, more appropriately headlined, "The Farmers Had What the Billionaires Wanted":

The truth was that Mr. Sramek wanted to build a city from the ground up, in an agricultural region whose defining feature was how little it had changed.  (emphasis mine)

While the podcast headline suggests that the Silicon Valley billionaires were motivated to help solve the state's housing crisis, I don't think that is accurate.  The plan really comes down to profit--one could even say greed.  The investors would not have gambled, otherwise, on getting the necessary local approval, by referendum, before they are able to begin to execute their plan.  

The images Dougherty shares of the agricultural areas of the California Delta compare and contrast in interesting ways with those in the Jon Kalish story that ran on WBUR's "Here and Now" (initially for KQED in January).  Kalish talks more about the Delta town of Isleton, leading with this: 

The small communities tucked into the San Joaquin River Delta are full of contradictions. Located northeast of the San Francisco Bay Area, much of the area is populated by farmers growing crops like wheat, alfalfa and rice. But, visitors might also stumble upon a circus performed on board a huge boat made to look like an island, a community of free spirits living out of tiny homes plopped down in an RV park, even a woman walking a goose on a leash down the street in town. Needless to say, it can be a quirky place.

Once primarily known for farming, Delta communities are changing as people priced out of the Bay Area discover this relatively close region that still offers land and freedom. It has become particularly attractive to artists and other creatives looking to live in a place where they’re free to create without the pressures of city regulators and rising rents. 

“The big question was, ‘Do I stay in the Bay Area, which is getting unsustainably expensive?’” said Michelle Burke, who used to be involved in running American Steel, a sprawling West Oakland artist collective. “My friends are being displaced. They’re losing their workspaces, their art spaces, their homes. It was just unsustainable.”

In Isleton, where Burke relocated, she’s got enough room on her property for six shipping containers to store materials and DIY projects. She’s one of many who have found the Delta to be a refreshing change.

* * *

While the newcomers are visible because of their aesthetic and creative projects, it’s not like people are flooding into these rural communities, he said. In fact, according to Wells, the population numbers have largely stayed the same for a hundred years. Still, some locals distrust the new people.

“The farmers that I talk to are more concerned about that than anybody else,” Wells said. “I think everybody else enjoys some controlled growth. The farmers are concerned because they have farm equipment, and they claim people are coming and stealing crap out of their farmyards.”