A New Beginning

When I was living in Boston and told my friends and colleagues that I was moving to Minneapolis, they stared at me like I was crazy. “Why would you ever go so far away from everything? What could possibly be in Minneapolis that would be worth moving for?” they were thinking. When I moved from Minneapolis to Champaign in Central Illinois, it was understandable. “She is moving for school. Is there any other reason to move to such a remote location?” And now I have moved to a city half the size of Champaign: Manhattan, Kansas.

In the US, 71 percent of people live in urbanized areas.* Most of them cannot conceive of why the other 29 percent do not live in cities. But that 29 percent are doing a lot of creative, forward-thinking things. Of course most of the domestic food supply is grown and harvested by them. But there are many other enterprises out here. With this blog I aim to highlight the start-ups, the small businesses, and companies that populate these less populated places.

I hope this blog will help acquaint both you and I with the reasons they located here, the issues they face, and the activity that takes place out here. As a new Kansan resident, I plan to begin with businesses in this state and gradually expand the reach of the blog. If you know of an interesting business out here on the prairie, tweet me @katenesse. I would love to hear about them.

* 2010 Census Summary File 1, table P2. An urbanized area is any incorporated city, town or village with at least 50,000 people.