Article on the appeal of smaller communities

This article on the attractiveness of smaller communities in Northwest Washington state makes some good points:

SINCE the spotted-owl wars of the 1990s, western Washington’s logging towns have been treated with disdain by their parent city. Crossing Puget Sound from Seattle, en route to Forks on the Olympic Peninsula, I met an otherwise amiable guy, who, when he heard my destination, said, “What are you doing there — checking out the suicide rate?” So much for Paul Bunyan, once an American superhero, now more often seen by enlightened urbanites as a redneck vandal, whose crimes against the environment make him a fit candidate for a penitential overdose....

In the last couple of years, more and more prospective buyers have quizzed local real estate agents about Internet access: paradoxically, online shopping, which has done much to wreck main streets in rural towns, has also put those towns within the reach of people who not long ago would have refused to live so far from the nearest bookshop or department store.

NB that though the above point sounds kind of cool, smaller businesses going under has probably been caused more by the omnipresence of big box retailers than online retailers. Indeed a benefit of the internet is that small business in small communities can exist, in some cases, precisely because of the internet if it sells through the internet.

Also this rings a little bit true for me:

The condescending slights that Forks endures from outsiders have stiffened its local pride and neighborly solidarity.