The Icelandic Canadian - 01.03.1981, Síða 42

40
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
SPRING, 1981
COUNTRYSIDE REDEVELOPMENT IS MAN'S
LONG-TIME PROJECT
by Elizabeth Whitney
St. Petersburg Times Business Editor
Promoting “the redevelopment of the
American countryside” has been the hobby
and the dream of G. B. Gunlogson for the
last “30 or 40” of his 92 years.
He and his wife Esther leave their winter
condo in downtown St. Petersburg to drive
to their home in Racine, Wis.
Their car is packed with Gunlogson’s
briefcases full of his writings and corre-
spondence on what he says is an evolving
“town and country economy.”
Now with mid-census and preliminary
1980 census figures showing a trend back to
the countryside, Gunlogson has been busy
writing background papers to promote the
organization of a nationwide Countryside
Association which he envisions as “a coun-
tryside chamber of commerce. ’ ’
Across the nation, Gunlogson says, there
are about 16,000 countryside communities
which, he stresses, are neither “rural” nor
‘ ‘ suburban. ” He defines a countryside com-
munity as “any city primarily tied to a rural
economy. ’’ In size they range from 1,000 to
about 20,000 and have streets, utilities and
services already in place.
The dramatic migration turnaround of the
1970s — contrary to that predicted by most
demographers — is particularly satisfying
to Gunlogson. When he established his
Countryside Development foundation with
his own money after World War II, the big
migration was from farm and small town to
the big cities.
When he first became interested in this
movement, he visited more than 500 towns,
talking with mayors and business people.
Through the years he’s also sponsored
surveys and influenced colleges to establish
courses on countryside economics, noting
especially those at the University of South-
western Minnesota and the University of
Georgia.
His interest was sparked by his own life
— which began on a farm his parents were
homesteading “on the rim of a wilderness”
in North Dakota.
‘ ‘We had oxen and horses but we began to
dream of power farming,” he recalls. Later,
as a mechanical engineer, he saw how
power farming made it possible for each
worker to produce 8 to 10 times more.
This eliminated jobs for thousands of
farm workers who flowed into the cities in
search of work, reducing the farm popula-
tion from 30-million in 1940 to 7.80-million
in 1977 — a time span when overall popula-
tion was growing.
OVER TIME, we all know what hap-
pened to many of these big manufacturing
cities as industry and more affluent citizens
moved out. Meanwhile notes Gunlogson, a
“vast system of, highways, power lines and
public facilities was being built across
America.”
He notes, too, that many big city-based
plants have moved or started branches in
established towns where parking is usually
no problem. Small town people, he adds,
have a pride in “their factory” that usually
is missing in larger cities.
The interrelationships between town and
country, he says, “are only beginning to be
developed. For example, more than half of
all farm families derive more than half of
their cash income from off-farm sources. ’ ’
Today, he adds, “Most of what once was
rural has become modernized and restruc-
tured into a new kind of town and country
economy.”