The opening article was not about potential but rather what has happened over the past five years. BTW, I've lived in Philadelphia, Dallas, and San Francisco amongst other huge metro areas. There's little to nothing that would attract me back.I love the title that Manhattan KS is a "big" and a "city".
The county I live in has 200x more people than that town and Ames has 12k more...Ames is a small town with a huge college.
I will give them credit that their state government hit rock bottom and corrected faster than Iowa's is so I'm sure they do have more growth potential right now.