Dec 17, 2024
from Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
Warsaw, Va., is well positioned to welcome visitors to Virginia's Northern Neck, the northernmost of three peninsulas jutting out into the Chesapeake Bay. Travelers from Richmond and parts farther west enter the peninsula via a bridge over the Rappahannock River and quickly find themselves in Warsaw's downtown, where they are greeted by colorful storefronts and charming brick sidewalks. But just a few years ago, they would have seen something very different: abandoned buildings, cracked sidewalks that dated back to the Great Depression, and streets that regularly flooded due to poor stormwater drainage. Most would have elected to continue driving.
"Downtown Warsaw wasn't any sort of destination," says Joseph Quesenberry, Warsaw's town manager. When he took the job in 2016, the town council had already drawn up a plan to revitalize the downtown, both to improve the quality of life for residents and to capitalize on the flow of tourists to the Northern Neck.
"Perception is reality," says Quesenberry. "If you drive through a town with broken sidewalks and boarded up shops, who is going to want to live there? What business is going to invest in that place?"
For a town of less than 2,000 people, however, funding such an ambitious reconstruction purely with local tax revenue would be impossible. They needed help.
The transformation of the United States from a largely agrarian society to a mostly suburban and urban one over the course of the 20th century is a well-known story. Today, roughly eight out of every 10 Americans live in or around a city. But despite a lower share of people, rural areas account for a disproportionate share of economic need. According to a 2023 report from the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the United States had 318 persistently poor counties in 2021, meaning they had poverty rates equal to or greater than 20 percent for three decades or more. Nearly 85 percent of those counties were not in metropolitan areas. Another study by FSG, a global nonprofit consulting firm, found that 91 of the 100 most disadvantaged communities in the country are rural.
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