The county scale has thus far dominated rural demographic research—this descriptive profile of small town America is unique with its place-based lens. Another important extension is the nationwide application of the Community Capitals Framework which builds on the body of research examining capitals within case studies focused on one or more communities. Here, we examine place-based “community capitals” at the national scale through novel integration of data from a wide variety of sources. The goal is to identify tiny town socioeconomic and demographic patterns of change—or trajectories—over the past several decades—and contrast remote small towns with those proximate to metropolitan areas. Results reveal both commonalities and distinctions. Instead of differences in trends across time, the analyses suggest that what differs are the more general profiles of small places as contrasted with national data. For example, regardless of metro proximity, small town America has lower levels of human and financial capital. Still, distinction also appears in that rural population growth has focused on high-amenity regions, bringing some increases in community capitals but potentially also exacerbating inequalities. In all, the analyses presented here offer an important foundation for necessary work at the place scale to improve understanding of the nuances inherent in population shifts, and their implications, within rural communities.

中文翻译：

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美国小镇社区首府的变化，1980-2010 年


迄今为止，县规模一直主导着农村人口研究——这种对美国小镇的描述性概况因其基于地点的视角而独一无二。另一个重要的扩展是社区资本框架在全国范围内的应用，该框架建立在针对一个或多个社区的案例研究中检查资本的研究主体之上。在这里，我们通过对各种来源的数据进行新颖的整合，在全国范围内研究基于地方的“社区资本”。目标是确定过去几十年来小镇社会经济和人口变化的模式（或轨迹），并将偏远小镇与靠近大都市区的小镇进行对比。结果揭示了共同点和区别。分析表明，不同之处不是随时间变化的趋势差异，而是小地方与国家数据相比的更普遍的概况。例如，无论距离地铁有多近，美国小镇的人力和金融资本水平都较低。不过，差异还在于，农村人口增长集中在舒适度高的地区，这带来了社区资本的一些增加，但也可能加剧不平等。总而言之，这里提出的分析为地方规模上的必要工作提供了重要基础，以提高对农村社区内人口转移固有的细微差别及其影响的理解。