Planning the Next Great Migration

Hi folks - I'm skipping ahead again to start presenting individual states in the Southeast, beginning with Tennessee because a reader expressed interest in it in a private conversation.

Tennessee is one of the more promising parts of this region if you want, or don’t mind, a very right-wing government. The U.S. Census Bureau reports population growth in most of its counties, not only the urban counties, which suggests that smaller towns are doing a good job of being livable for their residents. Geographically and culturally it has much in common with Kentucky, but there are more towns of moderate size where a migrant might find a home, and it appears to be better managed in some ways that will become important in future. On the downside (IMHO), partly because state law makes it easy to use public parks as one pleases, the state has become a meeting place for hordes of white nationalists.

The Nashville metro area exceeds 2 million people (extending to such cities as Hendersonville and Murfreesboro), and the Memphis region 1.3 million. Though Knoxville and Chattanooga have fewer than 200,000 people each, the surrounding metro area is over 860,000 for the former, 540,000 for the latter. Most migrants will wish to avoid all of these as too large. More acceptable places might include the following: