smart towns vs dumb towns

In 1900, the costs of moving away from one’s home town were high. You’d see your family and friends only once every year or two. You’d talk on the phone or communicate via telegraph only in an emergency. These costs discouraged enough folks from moving that every town had its intellectuals. (…)

In 2006 (…) you can get the benefits of moving, associating with other smart interesting people, without many of the costs formerly imposed on those who moved away from their home towns. (…)

Where formerly intelligent people were more or less randomly distributed and “lay where they fell”, our society is now sorting people by intelligence into smart and dumb towns and regions.

Philip Greenspun about the way smart people (well, all people, actually) aren’t confined to staying where they were born, increased mobility, and lower costs of moving away from your birthplace. There’s a good point there. After all, this isn’t a completely new phenomenon, as it basically started with the industrialization, when people flocked to the cities to get jobs. Where will this end? Smart clusters in the big cities and some nice SmartCommunities on the one hand, and brain-drained regions in the hinterland on the other?