Small rural towns get new name - and new attention

A micropolitan is: a) a frozen dessert for dieters; b) a popular magazine for young short women; c) a metro area in miniature.

If you answered c, the US Census Bureau would like to shake your hand. That's the name it affixed earlier this month to 565 rural areas across America that are beginning to look a little citified. They range from Abbeville, La., to Zanesville, Ohio, and include everything from ski resorts to retirement communities.

More important, they serve as a new way of looking at rural America and where it's headed. That direction is something observers are still figuring out. Since micropolitans are countrified places that work like metro areas, it's not yet clear whether they represent a new urban environment arising in the hinterland or an improved rural America, version 2.0.

Then there's the name, which admittedly doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

"Let me write that down," says Elle Wasson, a volunteer extraordinaire upon learning that she now lives in the Sedalia, Mo., Micropolitan Statistical Area.

"Micropolis?" ventures Renee Weller, secretary at the local art museum.

"What's wrong with 'small town'?" asks Jack Robinson, owner of the local Chrysler-Dodge auto dealership. "That's what we are."

While the term may send thousands of small-town residents scrambling for their dictionaries, the federal gobbledygook retains an upside. By getting their own statistical designation, small towns may garner more attention from researchers and possibly more funds from federal and state government, demographers say. "If you're the place that gets designated as micropolitan, that's a big help," says Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech in Alexandria, Va. "You're on somebody's radar."

Micropolitans certainly break the mold of the sleepy rural town. They each have a population cluster of 10,000 to 50,000 residents. They're the places where rural people go to eat and shop. And while New Yorkers might turn up their noses at the idea that these small towns could possibly be called urban, they do serve as economic and distribution centers within rural areas.

Some micropolitans are expanding rapidly. Six of the nation's 25 fastest growing counties lie in micropolitan areas. The fastest-growing one - Eagle County in the heart of Colorado ski country - saw its population nearly double during the 1990s. Others, like Vernon Parish, La., have succumbed to rural decay.

These communities look surprisingly diverse in other ways. While senior citizens make up only 3 percent of Eagle County, Colo., they account for more than a quarter of the residents of Flagler County, Fla. And if some micropolitans remain overwhelmingly white, others are acquiring a stream of new immigrants that are transforming the community.

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