Earlier this summer, Richard Florida breezed through Oregon and created a stir. An economic development guy from Carnegie Mellon University, Florida spoke at a conference in Portland about "the creative class" and its impact on a region. It is this mix of people -- artists, writers, designers, lawyers, engineers and others -- that is the key to job growth, Florida said. This talent, he added, flocks to places that are culturally rich and where people are open-minded and respectful of diversity.

All of which perked up Portland's ears, as -- although we suffer a chronic complex about our business image -- we pride ourselves on livability and a progressive approach to life.

An Oregonian reporter probed Florida further. When asked about the growth potential not of urban but rural communities, Florida faltered. "To be frank, I don't know what to say. Rural areas that are out in the middle of nowhere are in real deep trouble.... The forces of the economy are biased against them."

A bleak thought -- although kinder than some. At a business gathering a year or so ago, when someone asked what's the solution to unemployment in rural communities, the person sitting next to me -- also a nationally recognized expert in economic development -- said under his breath, "Move."

So maybe the guy was just making a funny. Tee hee. I'd guess the thousands of rural Oregonians who are pulling out the stops to ensure their communities' futures (see little town that could, p. 24) aren't chuckling. Even Florida's admonitions that there's no place for rural communities in this new, idea-charged economy is not exactly welcome.

Not that anyone's unaware of the obstacles or the odds. Dozens of small towns across Oregon, thousands across the U.S., are losing population, jobs, schools. Bigger cities, hubs of technological and educational opportunity, are sitting pretty in the new economic light, drawing praise from experts such as Florida.

It is true -- cities are hot. But that's today. Yesterday's mass migration flowed the other direction, to suburbia, its malls, cul-de-sacs and gated communities. Tomorrow? Who's to say hordes of the urban-weary won't be packing up their laptops and heading to the hinterlands to make a quieter, friendlier living.

Oregon's small towns are smart to be sprucing themselves up -- to be applying for every grant and loan imaginable, to be investing holistically, not only in a new industrial park and infrastructure, but an arts school, a community center or, in Fossil's case, a natural sciences field station.

It's not far-fetched that these investments will pay off, and in our lifetimes.

People are still trooping to Oregon -- despite our tarred name, lack of jobs and inability to put together a rational budget. Californians are abandoning their state for ours in far greater numbers than we're going the other way, and surely not all of them -- coming from a place of tangled freeways and metro sprawl -- are seeking an urban experience.

The rural can be a strategic piece of our economic future. As we map out a plan, let's bring all our resources to bear.
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Copyright 2003 Oregon Business magazine