![\"FallPic\"](\"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/FallPic.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Back in 1999 the U.S. Department of Agriculture \u00a0published\u00a0Natural Amenities Drive Rural Population Change<\/a><\/em>\u00a0by David A. McGranahan\u00a0of the\u00a0Food 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\u00a0people to different locations in the U.S.<\/p>\n As part of his analysis, McGranahan and his coworkers developed a set of measures of natural amenities for each county in the contiguous\u00a0U.S. \u00a0The key amenities they found that were attracting people were:<\/p>\n The\u00a0researchers\u00a0combined the objective, measurable, values of each item for each county and developed a composite “Natural Amenity Scale.” \u00a0The climate factors may change slowly, but the other factors don’t generally change. \u00a0Thus, \u00a0the value for each county should remain constant. \u00a0With this score, we can rank the counties in the contiguous U.S. from 1 to 3111. \u00a0Here’s what we found:<\/p>\n The 5\u00a0counties in the U.S. with the highest natural amenity values:<\/p>\n The\u00a05\u00a0counties in the U.S. with the lowest\u00a0natural amenity value:<\/p>\n Wonder how your county stacks up? \u00a0The Washington Post<\/em> recently developed an interactive map<\/a>. \u00a0With the map, you can point to your county and see how it ranks.<\/p>\n It might, but only if you consider these to be the only important factors in defining the aesthetics of a place. \u00a0No one considers only these things. They don’t address the people, the vegetation or the cities, towns, highways and other things people have built.<\/p>\n The \u00a0people in Red Lake County have considered a wide variety of other factors. \u00a0If the response\u00a0to the Washington Post<\/em> article is any indication, they like the sunsets, wheat fields and fall colors and seem to like living there.<\/p>\n The county I live in is in a four-way tie for 105 with a score of 5.15. \u00a0People seem to like it here too.<\/p>\n 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. \u00a0If you are trying to market the natural amenities of your community and attract more residents, \u00a0the USDA report and the data might give you some ideas to work on.<\/p>\n Back in 1999 the U.S. Department of Agriculture \u00a0published\u00a0Natural Amenities Drive Rural Population Change\u00a0by David A. McGranahan\u00a0of the\u00a0Food 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\u00a0people to different […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,2,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-factoids","category-featured","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1038"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1099,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038\/revisions\/1099"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explore.globalcreations.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n
\n
Does This Make Sense<\/h1>\n
Who Cares?<\/h1>\n
More Information<\/h1>\n
\n
Please Share<\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"