Saturday, July 09, 2005

Saving small towns

A couple of sources of note on the question of life in rural areas.

Macleans and CBC sent out a few top photographers to chronicle life in Hazelton, B.C.; Theodore, Saskatchewan; and Fogo Island, Newfoundland. Macleans now has the galleries online.

Meanwhile, Time discusses a less-than-original strategy being used by some U.S. towns to attract people to rural areas:
Hoping to reverse the decline, enterprising small towns across the Great Plains have begun offering land at little or no cost to anyone who will build a house and move in.

It's useful to remember just how and why rural areas were settled to begin with - sadly it appears that it may take a new wave of free land to bring people in again, but this may be an idea worth using in Canada as well to try to narrow the urban/rural divide.

No comments:

Post a Comment