Elizabeth Catte on what you are getting wrong about urban planning in Appalachia.

I emailed with the author of "What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia" to see if it's possible to dispel the same notions about urban and rural planning in the region.

Update: October 2024. Resending this interview I did with Elizabeth Catte in 2020, as it has become incredibly relevant. I haven’t touched one word here, except to change the name of the publication. —Sam

J.D. Vance hoodwinked me and he’s going to hoodwink you, too.

Photo by Sean Foster on Unsplash

I read Hillbilly Elegy in late-2016, hoping to get some sense of the “Appalachian mindset” and why West Virginia voted for Donald Trump by a 40 point margin. I thought I had it figured out, with Vance’s help: there was a special combination of the dregs of Albion’s seed, the so-named mountain range “separating” this part of the country from the distinguished coastal elitism, a predilection of joblessness and hopelessness that reared its ugly neck in drug overdoes and alcoholism. There was something different about Appalachia that somehow predicted that the region was going to vote red in 2016.