I grew up with a father who was in the Air Force so we had the opportunity to move around quite a bit, although we typically found ourselves living in suburbia. A good portion of my family, however, lives mainly in rural areas. For example, on my father's side they live in a small farming town in North Dakota.
Although I've never lived in North Dakota with my family I have spent a great deal of time there and over the last 25 years have seen a great deal of change. McCranahan and Beale theorized the "aging in place" phenomenom and in the town that my family lives this is exactly the case. The closest "big" town (a big town would be considered a town with a Walmart) is a 40 minute drive away. When I first visited the town when I was a child there were about 700 people living there. As the old got older and the young pursued education rather farming, the town slowly dwindled. The young moved to the larger cities of either Fargo, Grand Forks or Bismarck while the old slowly faded away. To this day only about 300 people live there. Most of my family moved to Fargo, since my younger cousins were now of college age. We can easily see urbanization at work even on this small scale.
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