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Leaning Into What Makes You Different: Rural Heritage as a Development Tool
Every small town is unique. Where the suburbs seem to have a chain store on every corner, and big cities live in their own little worlds, no two small towns are going to be exactly the same. They may have grown larger then smaller. They may be typical farm towns or company towns, college towns…
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Smart Growth in Rural Communities: Planning That Works
The Problem With the Pattern We’ve Built Rural sprawl does not look like urban sprawl, but it produces many of the same outcomes: longer distances between people and services, higher per-capita infrastructure costs, degraded natural lands, and built environments that make daily life harder for anyone who cannot drive. The pattern is familiar across rural…
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Rural Planning at the APA National Planning Conference: What Are We Missing?
I had the opportunity to spend two weeks in Michigan last month for the American Planning Association‘s APA National Planning Conference. APA is a membership organization of professional urban planners, volunteers, and elected officials from across the US and around the world. About four to five thousand people usually attend the annual conference, held in…
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Bringing Parks and Recreation into the Community Plan
Proven: Parks Are Critical Infrastructure for Rural Communities Healthy Communities Series · Week 2 of 5 Parks Are Infrastructure: Why Rural Communities Need to Bring Parks and Recreation into their Community Plans The case for treating recreation as essential — not optional Policy Brief Community Infrastructure May 2026 The fairgrounds. A trail with exercise stations….
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