Attachment, and Participation in the New West-Old West Population Change and Contrasting Integration

As we have detailed in prior chapters, historical and traditional patterns of internal migration in the United States consisted of large population movements from rural to urban areas. However, over the last 40 years a different pattern emerged at two distinct times during the late 1970s and mid-1990s. Both reflected more contemporary macro-level factors, including changing workforce and economic conditions, advances in telecommunications, and intergenerational transfers of wealth, each of which contributed to a reversal of the dominant pattern. Now, significant numbers of people were moving from urban to rural areas (Beyers and Nelson 2000; Fuguitt and Beale 1996; Fitchen 1991; Hawley and Mills 1982; Johnson and Purdy 1980; Johnson and Beale 1994; McGranahan 1999; Tucker 1976). These patterns, particularly in the 1970s, became popularized as an American rural renaissance (Morrison and Wheeler 1976; Brown and Wardwell 1980).

Population Change and Contrasting Integration, Attachment, and Participation in the New West-Old West Chapter