Twenty-five years after New Jersey-based academics Frank and Deborah Popper proposed the controversial notion of turning the increasingly desolate Great Plains into one vast buffalo preserve, this largely rural region is actually growing and flourishing, according to Joel Kotkin, a widely published author and distinguished scholar of urban studies at Chapman University in Orange County, Calif.

STILLWATER, Okla. — Twenty-five years after New Jersey-based academics Frank and Deborah Popper proposed the controversial notion of turning the increasingly desolate Great Plains into one vast buffalo preserve, this largely rural region is actually growing and flourishing, according to Joel Kotkin, a widely published author and distinguished scholar of urban studies at Chapman University in Orange County, Calif.



"People are increasingly moving to smaller cities rather than larger cities, where they can now have many of the same amenities," he said while speaking at Oklahoma State University's rural economic outlook conference recently. "The Great Plains is growing faster than the rest of the country. Personal income growth is much faster here than in the rest of the country."



Cities like Sioux Fall, S.D., Fargo, N.D. and Manhattan, Kan., are growing at a rate of nearly 20 percent or more annually. In fact, the population is rising as rapidly on the plains as it is along the so-called "Third Coast," the Front Range of the Rockies, Kotkin's analysis showed.



A wide range of factors are fueling the influx, including affordable housing, which appeals to empty nesters and downshifting boomers who are looking for quality-of-life and the opportunity to work from home, he noted.



A lack of blue-collar jobs, what he considers "the biggest social crisis in the U.S.," is also drawing people to the country's rural interior, where opportunities are booming in energy and agriculture.



What the region needs to do now to continue building on its success is to collaborate and invest in the creation a mid-continental trade corridor, he said.



"We have not built a good north-south infrastructure in this country," he said.



Additionally, while small cities surrounding metro areas like Oklahoma City and Dallas are thriving, the picture is less rosy in the smallest of the small towns, Kotkin admitted. Asked about what those communities can do to survive, he suggested they try to become regional centers.



Key attributes for a community of any size are access to post-secondary education, health care services adequate to meet the needs of people as they age and intelligent management of water resources to insure long-term environmental sustainability, he added. Beyond that, modern communication technology makes the benefits of a rural lifestyle more accessible to a whole new crop of converts.



"The Internet has changed everything," he said. "All you need to do is just continue to become better at what you do."



Keith Kisling, a wheat and stocker producer from Burlington, Okla., and a former chairman of U.S. Wheat Associates, was especially tuned in to Kotkin's observations on the growth in agricultural exports and the opportunities farmers have to feed a growing population worldwide. Even with continued innovation and farmers' proven adaptive abilities, Kotkin predicted food prices would go up in the future.



Kisling felt encouraged by the presentation, using his cellphone to send a text message about it to his banker back home.



"That's one of the most positive presentations I've heard about the Midwest in a long time," he said.



