The DM Register notes, Eleven of Iowa’s ‘micropolitan’ areas have lost jobs since 2008 and nine of them have lost population. Micropolitan areas in contrast with metropolitan areas have populations with 10,000 to 50,000. Fairfield as an outlier has bucked this some as one of two Iowa ‘micropolitan’ areas which saw an inter-10 yr. census growth in population (like somw Iowa Urban areas where the job growth is) since the great economic downturn.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : Another 10 years and the housing stock in these small rural farm towns will be shot. They look really bad now. The young and working of necessity have gone where the economy is. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : Is an article with good insight. Good insight to a place and time. There is a lot of poignancy out there. What was a mixed small farm economy is mostly gone over to larger landholdings and a class of some operators. There just are not very many people farming living out in the landscape anymore with that mixed economy that drove small towns everywhere in Iowa and across the rural middle of the country. Small mixed family farming just can’t hack the feedlot scale of animal husbandry. A result is the loss of the underlying need for the diverse small towns that supported the small farm. Those left are riding out an aging infrastructure. A lot of these towns as places with what was a range of hardware and food stores, schools and churches have no basis for existence, have no reason to be, and you can see the housing stock moldering away as the young and able have moved to larger towns, to larger places the Des Moines Register is calling the Micro urban areas and a few larger urban areas in Iowa. Fairfield is one of the few micro urban areas of Iowa that has grown recently. Fairfield has a few manufacturers, white collar employment and infrastructure that employs people. As an employment base a portion of people commute daily to Fairfield, regionally and even from Iowa City, for work. Some number of gen-X are moving back to raise families. Fairfield feels progressive in its elements. This article explains a lot about that vast cranky area of Iowa that elects a Rep Steve King: no employment base, no children, and living out retirement. Some good journalism.. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <awoelfleba...@yahoo.com> wrote : https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-kiron-iowa-pop-229-the-meaning-of-a-life-a-death-and-another-cup-of-coffee/2017/04/16/71203c06-2078-11e7-ad74-3a742a6e93a7_story.html?amp;utm_term=.ab98891e06aa&hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_kiron-7pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.b77eaccd200f https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-kiron-iowa-pop-229-the-meaning-of-a-life-a-death-and-another-cup-of-coffee/2017/04/16/71203c06-2078-11e7-ad74-3a742a6e93a7_story.html?amp;utm_term=.ab98891e06aa&hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_kiron-7pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.b77eaccd200f
