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I don't know how it is in the USA but here in France we kinda have the following issues:
- People leave the countryside and small cities en masse
- Houses rot empty anywhere that's more than a commute away from a big city
- There's a huge shortage of housing in the cities
We need people coming back to the countryside and small cities but all the employment is bundled away in big cities...
WFH, better communications, give benefits to anyone opening business in a small town, ...
And financial support for non chain shops. We need a small locally owned economy too.
Also we used to have a very dense train network that we let rot because iT wAsN't PrOfItAbLe (and then we spent hundred of millions on roads ajd highways of course)
it's sorta like that but with way more opioid deaths
edit: and instead of rotting empty, megacorporations buy the empty homes and turn them into airBnBs to keep the house prices high. maybe that happens in france too?
Airbnb seems to be more of an issue in cities than here.
I'm here in Georgia, USA. The small towns in my state, those well outside the major metro suburbs, are either emptying out OR the state is bringing in non-union factory and data center jobs to dominate the local economy with the promise of jobs and economic revitalization. These companies are given huge tax incentives to build (or relocate) and thus contribute nothing to local coffers directly (necessitating higher property and sales taxes on locals). Currently, there's a car plant being built near where I live. The locals in the rural areas were shocked to find out after construction began that their water wells might stop working as the factory and it's subsequent suppliers setting up in the area will be draining the county dry... the state said they could. They're out of pocket to drill deeper wells and the state doesn't care... at the state level, they've actually made it harder (legally through environmental review) for local municipalities to direct the development of water infrastructure but easier for private developers (who have fewer reviews to go through) to just build whatever water infrastructure they see fit. Meanwhile, back in town, a handful of out of state multibillion dollar corporations are buying up any and all real estate that isn't nailed down and renting it back to us at exorbitant prices.