Growing up in the permanently depressed, tourism-dependent Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I'm always interested in reading about how other rural, out-of-the-way places try to survive, if not thrive. This piece from Helsingin Sanomat is thus an interesting look at the problems of Finnish Lapland.

Lapin lääni province is a rural hinterland that struggles to keep pace with the tech-driven economic growth of southern and urban Finland. Planners there are trying to catch up by going in two directions at once. First, they're playing the tech card with a big animation studio - and with those long winter nights, there's plenty of time to sit at the editing console. Second, they're also playing the tourism card, specifically with the "development of adventure travel packages that are marketed around the world." Even here, though, an in typical Finnish fashion, they're tying in technology: "a camera system is being developed for snowmobile trails which would give the travellers a video to remember their trip by."

It'd be great for the U.P. - or even parts of it, like the western tip - to do something similar, differentiating itself from other places in the Midwest where there are lots of trees, snow, and deer and few people. Adventure travel or recreation would be a natural fit (no pun intended).