…one of the most valuable things a person can do for the environment is to “stay in one place.” If we are constantly on the move, we lose connection with our surroundings, our landscape, our communities. We become disengaged from civic involvement and, because we are unfamiliar with our environment, we are unaware when advocacy needs to happen. To choose a place that becomes our own, imperfect as it may be, allows us to forge connections, take ownership, and become attuned to the needs around us – in short, it allows us to care, and through caring comes action.

This quote comes from Living the Good Life in the City Creating Your Sustainable Urban Homestead, an article by Karin Kliewer of Little City Farm. The rest of the article is equally excellent, but this section struck me.

Staying in one place isn’t a value held by my parents’ generation. For them, movement brought opportunity and represented success. For them, global thinking is more important than local. I believe this is their own reaction to their parents’ generation. A reaction to limited opportunities and parochialism.

But it seems that my own generation is now reacting to my parents’, with a return to the local. Not to embrace it’s limitations or to return to a provincial lifestyle, but to recapture the good that was lost in only looking outside one’s current community and place. To be somewhere, even if it’s not NY or LA. To make a place in whatever town or community you are in. To take ownership and participate in that community. To make it a better place. To make it the kind of place others want to be.

The Internet may also encourage this return to the local, as the opportunities that once could only be found by living near or in great civic hubs are now available in the most remote regions. Telecommuting, online university and web-based communities allow people to reach many of the things they once could only find in moving. Perhaps, over time, we’ll see more people staying in their small towns and rural communities because the need for “big city living” is met well enough online.