The Rise OF New America

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The dominant lifestyle and economy of the 21st century will spring from certain rural counties. So predicts Jack Lessinger.

Lessinger Close-up
Migration often precedes renewal.

Once a week in his house in Seattle, land economist Jack Lessinger, a serious amateur musician, cranks up his violin and, with three cohorts, embarks on an evening of chamber music. Professor emeritus of real estate and urban development at the University of Washington, Lessinger is almost the epitome of the dedicated city-dweller. Smart and cosmopolitan, he enjoys sophisticated restaurants, live opera, art exhibits, the well-stocked libraries, amenities that abound in this vigorous, often rain-swept city on the Sound.

At the same time, however, another part of him—the academic, theoretical part; the prophetic part, one might even add-sees Seattle and, for that matter, most major U.S. cities as dinosaurs caught in the grip of turbulent change. They are, he senses, less and less able to provide enough jobs, decent housing and basic services, let alone an uncongested, healthy living environment. Not only that, the suburbs—for decades now the embodiment of the middle-class American dream of security and contentment—are becoming equally outmoded as they fall victim to similar blights: heavy traffic, blue air, breaking and entering, the numbing sameness of nearby shopping malls and fast-food chains.

But these debilities are only symptoms. What caused them is a national economy dangerously out of kilter with its resources. As a result, says Lessinger, we are even now in the throes of discarding our current economic structure and defining its replacement. Put another way, we are at a crossroads. Not only that, the direction signs he sees posted there point quite specifically to America's more rural counties. How he came to read those signs involves our comings and goings—our migrations as a people—over the span of our history.

What is distinct about Lessinger's conclusions is that they are not based on philosophic or subjective analyses, valid though these might coincidentally prove. Rather, he claims, they are based on objective criteria, on pure data, on unmistakable messages contained in the unfolding record of changing property values in America over the last 200 years. Moreover, those messages describe more than the face value of real estate. Indeed, they reflect not only the successes and failures of the economies in which that value arose and fluctuated, but also the assumptions, tastes and goals of the society itself.