Back in 1999 the U.S. Department of Agriculture published Natural Amenities Drive Rural Population Change by David A. McGranahan of the Food and Rural Economics Division, Economic Research Service. His thesis is that where natural resources like timber, coal, farmland and the like were once the main attraction for people, more recently aesthetic attributes have been attracting people to different locations in the U.S.
As part of his analysis, McGranahan and his coworkers developed a set of measures of natural amenities for each county in the contiguous U.S. The key amenities they found that were attracting people were:
The researchers combined the objective, measurable, values of each item for each county and developed a composite “Natural Amenity Scale.” The climate factors may change slowly, but the other factors don’t generally change. Thus, the value for each county should remain constant. With this score, we can rank the counties in the contiguous U.S. from 1 to 3111. Here’s what we found:
The 5 counties in the U.S. with the highest natural amenity values:
The 5 counties in the U.S. with the lowest natural amenity value:
Wonder how your county stacks up? The Washington Post recently developed an interactive map. With the map, you can point to your county and see how it ranks.
It might, but only if you consider these to be the only important factors in defining the aesthetics of a place. No one considers only these things. They don’t address the people, the vegetation or the cities, towns, highways and other things people have built.
The people in Red Lake County have considered a wide variety of other factors. If the response to the Washington Post article is any indication, they like the sunsets, wheat fields and fall colors and seem to like living there.
The county I live in is in a four-way tie for 105 with a score of 5.15. People seem to like it here too.
If you are looking for a place to live that has the values identified here, you could start with the list and work your way down until you come to a place that meets your other needs. If you are trying to market the natural amenities of your community and attract more residents, the USDA report and the data might give you some ideas to work on.
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