CityLab Daily: Should Government Agencies Leave Capital Cities?

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Long division: You may have heard the idea that federal agencies could be distributed around the United States as a form of economic stimulus. In North Carolina, a similar idea might soon be put into practice. The state is about to sign off on a budget that moves its Division of Motor Vehicles out of Raleigh to give an economic boost to Rocky Mount, 60 miles east of the booming capital. When it became time to vacate the DMV’s deteriorating headquarters, some saw this as an opportunity to bridge North Carolina’s urban-rural divide, redistributing state resources to a county with the highest unemployment rate in the state and scoping out a cheaper office to rent.