I had dinner last night with a few of the region’s top economic developers (in my humble opinion) – at least the top thinkers about this stuff.
And I posed a question to this gang. Take away all the perceived obstacles. Suppose the government had money to invest in infrastructure and economic development. Blue sky it. What could be done to help rural Newfoundland communities become viable for the next 50 years.
Their answers kept coming up green. Green energy. Green communities. Attracting green entrepreneurs. And there was some thinking around data centres and other non-location specific ideas.
At the core was this notion that there might be a sub-section of the population in the developed world that would like to live in small, quaint communities if they could make a decent living there.
I liked it. Even from a branding perspective.