SouthsideVirginia is a stretch of five rural counties along the North Carolina border on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains clustered around the aging industrial cities of Danville and Martinsville. The implementation of an innovative technology-based economic-development strategy in the region over the past few years offers valuable lessons for those who are trying to solve the paradox of rural economic development in a global, knowledge-based economy. Simply put, the paradox is that in a U.S. economy that prides itself on developing and exploiting technology and talent, we have not figured out how to use technology and public investment to spread the wealth to rural areas.
Like many rural areas, the decline in tobacco growth and the closing of textile mills and furniture factories in Southside left the region with a diminished economic base and a largely semiskilled and unskilled workforce. Danville is typical of micropolitan areas in the United States, many of which have been deteriorating since the 1950s. The combination of depopulation, agricultural mechanization and consolidation, and the decline of low-skilled manufacturing jobs due to increasing productivity and global labor market arbitrage have left rural areas bereft of sources of wealth creation and gainful employment. The effect of these economic trends on Danville was a population loss of 25 percent between 1980 and 2010.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Leveraging Universities, Technology, and Education to Drive Rural Economic Growth
