The Plight Of Small Town America

"Pastures get paved. A ranch becomes someone's back yard. Sewer lines go in. Somewhere along the way comes a strip mall, a fast-food joint, maybe a lawyer's office. From the Rockies to suburban Atlanta, urban refugees are filling in the empty places, turning quaint villages into icons of sprawl and sleepy close-knit places into boomtowns. At the same time, in vast stretches of middle America, many small towns are watching young families and jobs drift away. Driven by stagnant wages and a dull farm economy, lured by opportunity and easy access to doctors and malls, millions of people fled rural communities in the past decade." The result: the disappearance of the classic American small town.

Thanks to Christian Peralta