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Center for Rural Affairs, www.cfra.org cost. A Sense of Community. Many people long to live in a community where people know and care about each other. It's not surprising. Surveys on happiness and life satisfaction suggest the factor most strongly corre- lated with satisfaction is regular contact with a network of friends — community. It's more strongly correlated with satisfaction than income. Communities that create spaces for people to meet and interact and work at being friendly are more likely to attract and keep families and businesses than those that don't. That is especially true of native sons and daughters who have experience living in the community. They are more likely to return home to raise their families if they experienced a strong sense of community and supportive interaction as children. Social Capital. When Christian Science Monitor reporter Laurent Beltsie was interviewed on National Pub- lic Radio about his series, "Alone on the Range," he was asked whether he thought the rural communities of the Heartland could turn it around and survive. He said that while all the trends were against them, he would not count them out because he was so impressed by the people he had interviewed — their spirit, their entre- preneurial bent, and devotion to working together to make their community work. That's social capital. Communities that have it are more attractive places to live because things work better. People work together to solve problems and make things better. They have disputes, but they resolve them rather than letting them simmer. Communities can enhance their future by establishing a culture of working together to solve problems, launch new initiatives, and make the community a better place to live. Young people and families must be involved in the community. If we want them, we need to give them some influence in making the community a place they want to live and raise their families. They have unique needs. They want swimming pools, summer baseball, and other programs to enrich the lives of their children. Perhaps they want better Internet service or have ideas for making the community more attractive by restoring historic buildings and character. Communities that allow them to lead will more likely keep them and draw more like them. High Speed Internet Service. It's a necessity. Young people see it as a contributor to quality of life. It en- ables them to connect to the outside world in a way that brings cultural and other amenities of distant places closer. Access to Nature and a Quality Environment. In the future, access to uncrowded natural land will be in- creasingly hard to come by, and it will be an increasingly valuable asset for communities. Communities that offer it will have a leg up in attracting families to start businesses and drive revitalization. Page 15