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Dim forecast ... glimmer of
hope
By Joe Duggan/Lee
Enterprises LINCOLN - A
regional economist delivered a dark message Thursday
about the quickening pace of population loss and
economic decline in rural Nebraska.
Larry Swanson also offered a glimmer
of hope: Nebraska cities with populations less than
10,000 have a chance to reverse trends - but they must
act immediately.
“Nebraska has not really stepped
up to pursue those opportunities aggressively,” he
said.
An audience of about 100 listened to
Swanson, director of the O'Connor Center for the Rocky
Mountain West, give a presentation at the Great Plains
Art Museum. It was the second in a series of annual
talks about grassland conservation and rural
sustainability sponsored by the Grassland
Foundation.
Swanson blitzed his listeners with a
series of slides showing population, aging, income and
other trends in the central Great Plains. Forty-two of
Nebraska's most rural, isolated counties have lost
population since the 2000 Census, he said.
Such
counties are not only seeing people leave, they're
experiencing death rates that are higher than birth
rates. That means that by 2015, many of those counties
will see growth in just one age group: 65 and
older.
“It's happening fast, and we can't
catch up with it unless we really work at it,” he
said.
Swanson, a native of Edgar who earned a
doctorate in economics at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, has closely studied population growth
in the Rocky Mountain states that started in the 1990s
and continues now. The growth was fueled by economic
shifts -downsizing by large companies, outsourcing to
smaller companies and globalization - that allowed
companies and people to move to non-urban areas. In
other words, they moved to where they wanted to
live.
“The geography of economic activity is now
a moving target,” he said. “All the old textbooks need
to be thrown away. The old economy encouraged
urbanization. The new economy encourages growth where
people want to live.”
What makes Colorado,
Wyoming and Montana places where people want to live is
the quality of the communities and their proximity to
mountains and wilderness areas, or so-called natural
amenities.
But they've also become expensive
places to live, particularly for young people who want
to buy houses. Small towns in Nebraska can offer quality
places to live and affordable housing, but also have to
offer the natural amenities to seal the
deal.
Swanson argued that the traditional model
of chasing factories and companies doesn't work in
isolated counties anyway, but standing out as an
interesting place to live with nearby recreational
opportunities, smaller cities could attract new
residents.
Nebraska's rural leaders should focus
renewal efforts on a few “middle places,” or communities
with populations of less than 10,000 that have the
greatest potential, he said. Among those he identified
were Alliance, York, Sidney, Chadron and Ogallala. He
also said growth potential exists for a few smaller
communities that are near such truly unique natural
amenities as the Sandhills.
Communities don't
need only to attract migration numbers in the tens of
thousands to reverse the declines. To be successful, the
efforts will require investments of finances and efforts
much greater than are now being made.
Swanson
knows some people will think he's picking winners and
losers. But if trends continue in Nebraska, all but
Lincoln, Omaha and a handful of other cities will lose
anyway.
“We can't play-act, we can't walk through
the motions,” he said. “We're talking real money ... and
a targeted approach.”
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