Thank you for the nice comment. It’s basically a network effect. Towns depend on a few key social nodes, the people and institutions that connect everyone else. Once those hubs disappear, both the social and economic networks thin out and recovery becomes very difficult.
You see something similar in cool-hunting and the adoption curve. Companies watch what innovators and early adopters are into, then rush to package it for everyone else. But in doing that, they often kill the thing that made it appealing. Lisbon (where I lived for five years during the early 2010s) is a good example. People showed up because it felt local and authentically Portuguese. As that image spread and the city gentrified, prices went up, and the character that drew people in started to fade. By the time the latecomers arrive, many of them aren’t even chasing authentic Lisbon anymore but rather home with a bit of foreign added in. They just like the polished, global version that replaced it, even though that version exists only because the original was worn down. I went back to visit in recent years and I heard zero Portuguese on the streets which was shocking, cause before 2017 I'd hear Portuguese spoken everywhere, all day. Basically became an oroboros eating its own tail.
Even with the remote work redistribution in the pandemic, the new cool mid-sized and small cities in the States became few and everyone just gravitated towards those. I think the only thing I'm an innovator in, in my life (nearly 20 yrs as a DN), is consistently choosing to live in cities and countries that become gentrified several years later, causing me to seek out new places. I'm crossing my fingers it doesn't happen in Georgia (country) where I'm headed very soon, but it being located between Iran and Russia might deter many at the moment.
Thank you for the nice comment. It’s basically a network effect. Towns depend on a few key social nodes, the people and institutions that connect everyone else. Once those hubs disappear, both the social and economic networks thin out and recovery becomes very difficult.
You see something similar in cool-hunting and the adoption curve. Companies watch what innovators and early adopters are into, then rush to package it for everyone else. But in doing that, they often kill the thing that made it appealing. Lisbon (where I lived for five years during the early 2010s) is a good example. People showed up because it felt local and authentically Portuguese. As that image spread and the city gentrified, prices went up, and the character that drew people in started to fade. By the time the latecomers arrive, many of them aren’t even chasing authentic Lisbon anymore but rather home with a bit of foreign added in. They just like the polished, global version that replaced it, even though that version exists only because the original was worn down. I went back to visit in recent years and I heard zero Portuguese on the streets which was shocking, cause before 2017 I'd hear Portuguese spoken everywhere, all day. Basically became an oroboros eating its own tail.
Even with the remote work redistribution in the pandemic, the new cool mid-sized and small cities in the States became few and everyone just gravitated towards those. I think the only thing I'm an innovator in, in my life (nearly 20 yrs as a DN), is consistently choosing to live in cities and countries that become gentrified several years later, causing me to seek out new places. I'm crossing my fingers it doesn't happen in Georgia (country) where I'm headed very soon, but it being located between Iran and Russia might deter many at the moment.