Quote:
Originally Posted by Docta_Love
I think a good case study for this question of forgotten towns may be Sidney, Nebraska the HQ of Cabellas is being shut down as Cabellas merges with Gander Mountain and consolidates in Springfield, MO which seems to have won out partially because it has better infrastructure ie an airport. Now this town must re-brand and rebuild itself but there is no new Cabellas waiting in the wing like when its armory closed in the 60's. How does a town of 6,000 or so people in western Nebraska compete to draw in jobs. Every region will have its own niche to exploit think Greenville, KS after the tornado but many of the jobs that are created now a days even in bigger metro areas are service industry related which doesn't provide the same quality pay and benefits.
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Interesting example.
Sidney is losing to Springfield, but Springfield itself is a smaller city that probably loses a lot to bigger metros and a picture of "heartland" middle class decline.
I can think of various ideas which could help save the Springfields but not the Sidneys. The latter may be sort of hopeless, and even if its not there's a matter of resources. A town of 6,000 is only 10% of a town with 60,000 but they are still sort of classed together as "small towns". Even the small city of 600,000 is sort of lower on the food chain. I guess to be efficient with things like government funding used to help local communities the truth might be that its literally 10x-100x times more effective to fix places which are at least moderately sized and hope they can then act as anchors to the little towns around them.