Asset Maps and the Digitization of Rural Opportunity

• In Event: Networking Rurality Part 2

Abstract

An expanding high-tech economy paired with an affordability crisis in America’s biggest tech hubs has drawn attention to opportunities for economic growth in small cities and rural regions. This increased attention has spurred economic developers and rural municipalities to rethink the role of outsiders in local economies and come up with new tactics for attracting investment in a distributed virtual world. Drawing from ethnographic research in the rural Midwestern United States, I explore one of these tactics: the digital asset map. In this paper, I describe how local and nationwide mapping initiatives have pushed for the digitization of rural community-based asset data, from water and sewer infrastructure to breweries and mountain biking trails. I show that while the increased demand for digital asset data is marketed as efforts to repopulate and revitalize rural communities in decline, the resulting mapping initiatives actually draw attention to and reify the stark divides between the rural haves and the rural have-nots.

Author

• Jean Hardy, Michigan State University