The Attractions of Nowhere

For many mobile Americans, it is back to the countryside. Demographer Peter Morrison of the Rand Corp. has produced statistics showing that people of all ages--no longer just young hippies--are moving from cities and suburbs to rural areas of the Dakotas, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Vermont, upper Michigan, the Sierra foothills and the long-depressed Appalachian regions that are benefiting from the coal boom.

Ten of the 25 largest metropolitan areas have not grown in the 1970s, and others have actually declined, notably the metropolitan areas of Cleveland, Savannah, Seattle, St. Louis and Pittsburgh. Rural counties that were losing population in the 1960s show the biggest gains. "The more remote kinds of places," says Morrison, "those that used to be regarded as 'nowhere,' have be come 'somewhere' in the minds of many migrants."

Morrison's findings were strongly supported by a report issued last week by the U.S. Census Bureau showing that 85% of the nation's population growth in the past five years had occurred in 29 Southern and Western states. While Arizona was expanding by 25.3%, for example, New York State was actually losing .7% of its residents.

A lot of young people already in rural America are staying put. "Traditionally," says Morrison, "many of them would have gone on a Greyhound bus, headed for the city and never come back." He thinks fewer now dream of "making it in the big city."

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