Widely respected political correspondent James Fallows has spent quite a bit of time in the last few years traveling to (mostly) smaller unheralded cities that are making things work, and he files this astonishingly optimistic report on the state of ordinary citizens getting stuff done in a spirit of civic pride and inclusion.

Some of the most interesting findings:

* Fallows, who doesn't care about the arts at all, was surprised to learn how much economic value can be unleashed by the arts.

* Diversity is a key to success even in smaller towns. In almost every case he cites in this article, there was some kind of fruitful mixing of young and old, longtime residents and immigrants, people who had moved away and come back, or black and white. In a follow-up article Fallows specifically calls out research universities as one of the major tools of diversity.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/03/eleven-signs-a-city-will-succeed/426885/

* Smaller cities have advantages that might appear to be disadvantages: cheap land, empty buildings, abandoned infrastructure, even brutal winters. It's literally all in the perspective.

Not to throw cold water on ya... but this is what recently happened at another meat packing plant with diverse (meaning Muslim) workers:

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_29330180/cargill-tried-resolve-issues-before-firing-colorado-muslim

Hopefully Cargill can be used as a bad example in that case. 

In general diversity leads to more success.