Who Is Killing the Towns of Western Massachusetts?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

"It may be the governor. In the State House. With the lobbyists."

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Bu-but I thought the Republicans were excessively beholden to the interests of small-town bumpkins and jerkwater hicks and were effectively a rural interests party!

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I think some of you are missing the point of the article that the people in these small towns are in fact trying to take local responsibility and take control of their own destinies, and the big telecom companies and former Town of Swampscott Select Board member Charlie Baker aren't letting them.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Well people don't want move to Western Massachusetts that's whats killing that region of Massachusetts. People that move to Massachusetts want to move to Boston or its suburbs in Eastern Massachusetts.

Did you read the article, which is about some of the reasons why this is? People don't spring fully formed from the head of Zeus with the desire to move or not move someplace.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Also, while I realize this contention probably won't wow most people on this mostly young, mostly urban, mostly pro-Idea of Progress (in whatever form) forum, I have to put in a good word for the idea that there are intangible cultural reasons to have some well-settled rural areas or even just small cities (of which Western Mass has quite a few) in a country, which could justify a certain degree of subsidization--a sense of connection to the past and the dead, for example, or opportunities for artists and writers to present rural life without being ridiculous and twee, or even the possibility of drawing employees of natural recreation spots from a more-or-less local population.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Or better yet, both, some small towns live on while some areas can be full of wildlife that has been missing from the area for 200 years.

This is actually what has already happened to the hillier parts of Western Mass since the nineteenth century when better agricultural land further west opened up. It's the best of both worlds, yeah. The phrase "dishevelled dryad loveliness" from The Two Towers comes to mind.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Okay yeah that'd be badass.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I think rural America should get a basic income at this point

Rural America is getting sh**ttier every year and if someone dosent do something about it soon, these people will vote us into the stone age with them

Please. Just stop...

What? This is a serious proposal. Rural America has been dying economically for 40 years and it get's worse every year. That's part of the reason they voted for a demagogue like Trump. They should get a basic income or a negative income tax return otherwise they will start to hold the country back due to resentment at being ignored

I think the Democrats should introduce a proposal to provide a basic income for those "ruined by globalization" It will win them votes and not make rural voters feel like their taking a handout

Most of the towns that are the subject of the article did not vote for Trump....

No, but the Mondale_was_an_insidejobs of the world won't rest until they do! Make the Mohawk Trail Great Again!

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Update: Business interests have launched a desperate-feeling rebranding that's being met with universal mockery and disdain from locals.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Perhaps the future of Western Mass is serving the bourgeoise. Hubbardton Forge is just up the road in Vermont, but it is an example. They make artistic unique items. I just bought a pair of forged metal sconces from them (see below). In the other direction, at the other end of the Birkenstock Belt, in the NW corner of CT, I went to an artisan who reclaims century old antique wood from demolished barns and the like, which is re-milled to make new flooring. I wanted aged oak wood because it has a patina that new wood just does not have, and the rest of my units in Hudson have it, so I wanted it in the new unit above the garage. And the folks who run these places, and do the work, are of course urban cosmopolitans with a sense of artistry and romance. And then there is the very expensive farm to market food, that one can buy directly, or savor in restaurants. There is a big movement to subsidize these micro farms. If the huge grain farms in the midwest can "harvest" the federal subsidies, why not micro farms in the hard scrabble land of New England, and the Hudson Valley?

That I suspect is the future of the region - the fabricator and the playground, and the retreat for and of the bourgeoise. But no, you won't see that message in the marketing ads.

That is in fact already what large parts of Western Mass are doing--for example, the southern Berkshires or the area immediately north and west of Amherst. Even the generally down-and-out area around the Quabbin has the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, which is supposed to be great if you're into the whole combined scholarship and practice school of learning about Buddhism. But that can't really sustain a whole regional economy on its own (much as it might flatter you to think otherwise ); there's a reason Vermont is one of the poorest states in the Northeast despite generally competent economic stewardship. dead0man does have a point about a certain level of managed decline probably being in order, and I think Jacobin American earlier in the thread is on-point as usual in terms of what would need to be done to keep at least some of these communities vibrant and preserve some semblance of New England small-town life in the long run. There's also a lot to be said about the squandered potential of Springfield as a business and destination city (a big part of the city's problems is that it has an interstate highway separating the downtown area from the main tourist attraction. Gotta love mid-century urban planning!).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Update: Business interests have launched a desperate-feeling rebranding that's being met with universal mockery and disdain from locals.

I have no idea why they didn't just go all in and commission Dr. Westchesterton

That's exactly what I was thinking too.

Moving right along, what pray tell, is Springfield's main tourist attraction?

Their welcome sign - "Hey, at least we're not Hudson NY"

I mean other than Six Flags, the Basketball Hall of Fame, and the Big E? Sure

The Basketball Hall of Fame is what I was referring to.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Also, Torie, I go to Albany pretty frequently and there's actually a lot I like about the city. Which makes it even more of a shame that it's so poorly laid out and ugly. I blame Nelson Rockefeller.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Albany is at one end of an east-west axis that my life revolves around and that I haven't really left in the past couple of years. (The other end is Boston.) I really love driving along Route 2 between Concord and Greenfield (east of Concord the route becomes kind of a mess) or between Greenfield and the Albany area. Of course these days most people trying to get from Boston to Albany take the Mass Pike, which is faster but less scenic and which you have to pay money for. Sad!

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Related point, if it hasn't been mentioned by someone else already: It's appropriate that we're discussing Albany in this thread - seat of state government aside, it has more in common with Western MA than it does with the rest of the I-90 corridor in NYS.

If anything, the Massachusetts state government even under Baker appears to have rather less contempt for Western Mass than the New York state government has for its own Capital District, if the sudden improvement in the condition of the blacktop on Route 2 as soon as you cross the state line going east is any indication.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Here's the 2016 Massachusetts swing map (courtesy of realisticidealist):



There are bits of pink in central Hampshire and Hampden and the more successfully Toriefied parts of the Berkshires (mostly in the south, but look at Williamstown!), and (as I would have predicted) the area immediately to the north of Amherst and Northampton* is in the lightest shade of blue and probably trended towards Clinton for the most part--I know for a fact that Conway and Deerfield did. The areas north and south of the Quabbin, on the other hand, and most of the north Berkshires (even North Adams, which is allegedly on the right track), and the Hill Towns above the Pioneer Valley proper, and the more downscale suburbs of Springfield, are...yeah.

(Erving, the deepest blue a couple towns to the east of Greenfield, still has a working paper mill; I'm not sure quite what the dynamic there is.)

*This area is probably the single most ALATT rural area in the country, and is the source of most of the stereotypes about Western Mass.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What does ALATT mean?

"All liberal, all the time". It's of BRTD's coinage. I don't actually think it's a perfect descriptor of the politics of the "Happy Valley" but it's the shortest and punchiest shorthand I could think of when I made the post.