Comment by spicyusername

1 day ago

For anyone who has driven through those parts of the deep south, it's not too surprising.

Conditions down there are pretty dire. Driving through most of those little towns is very depressing.

You can tell there used to be tons of beautiful, small, walkable communities dotted across the South, in places like this, but now they are mostly just the corpses of post-WW2 growth that have long, long since been abandoned, with no story for economic turnaround coming.

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spicyusername

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duxup  1 day ago

A lot of those small towns struggle with having their hands tied by their given state too. States restricting small towns from raising / gathering funds to provide services / make their town more desirable is pretty common in those areas. Often times policing is one of the few services provided, if only because they gather funds from their activities, and that is its own perverse incentive a times.

It's tough to be a small town anywhere, but in the south it seems far more dire / there's very little that can be done by local cities.

It's unfortunate as with the potential for work from home type situations some of these picturesque small towns might provide a great spot for people to move to, but when you see the parks are a mess, pool closed ... you don't want to move there.

  • Taikonerd  1 day ago

    > A lot of those small towns struggle with having their hands tied by their given state too. States restricting small towns from raising / gathering funds to provide services / make their town more desirable is pretty common in those areas.

    I hadn't heard about this... do you have a link with more information?

  • Der_Einzige  1 day ago

    The Deep South isn’t as bad as the Great Plains. Go look at population charts for proof. The Deep South is growing while the Great Plains are being depopulated.