One year at the Rural Futures Lab blog

By Jennifer Jensen, RUPRI Research Analyst, Rural Futures Lab

I have been managing this blog for just over one year (happy birthday, RFL blog!), and I wanted to take a break from our usual programming to take a look back at... our usual programming.

We have been proud to publish posts on a wide variety of topics of interest to rural American communities. The blog has featured researchers, students, policy experts, and community development practitioners of all stripes.

In the past 13 months, the blog has attracted readers from every state in the union except one (anyone have advice on how to break into the elusive Rhode Island market?), and from all over the world. Especially Canada.

Rural Futures Lab Director, Brian Dabson, laid out our vision for rural America in our very first post. We believe that rural America will continue to be an important contributor to national prosperity, but there is lots of work ahead to fully engage and develop our rural assets.

And what are our "rural assets"?

Photo courtesy of Jeff Yost and the Nebraska Community Foundation.

Many of our blog contributors have made the point that rural Americans themselves are a major asset. In particular, rural youth and young adults are the hope for our collective future. Our bloggers tackled this topic from many angles.

• Craig Schroeder of the RUPRI Center for Rural Entrepreneurship notes that supporting youth entrepreneurship is actually a successful economic development practice.
• Mary Snow and Noah Wilson (Rural Support Partners) and Darryl Birkenfeld (Ogallala Commons) offer personal accounts of how communities can invest in the next generation of rural leaders, right now.
• Katie McCaskey, a young entrepreneur shares her Micropolitan Manifesto.
• And Tim Collins (Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs) envisions rural schools as a vital tool for community development.

Photo courtesy of David Kay.

Another asset in rural America is our vast and diverse base of natural resources. A key question that the Rural Futures Lab is asking is how we can better manage the use and stewardship of our natural resources to benefit rural Americans, the national economy which relies on those resources, and the environment itself.

This question has led to an interesting mix of blog posts that feature the intersection between natural resources and economic development, energy, and governance issues:

• Research on economic issues ranges from how to quantify the "New Natural Resource Economy" to how the "green economy" is faring.
• In two posts, my colleague at Cornell, David Kay, explores how energy development questions get to the heart of democracy in the U.S.
• Shanna Ratner (Yellow Wood Associates) argues for new stewardship approaches across the rural-urban divide.
• A student blogger relives his research trip to West Texas and wonders how the growth of the wind industry affects community development there.

Agriculture is as important to rural America as any other industry. These days, food system research, policy, and practices are innovative and vibrant, as our bloggers have shown:

• Rich Pirog (C.S. Mott Group for Sustainable Food Systems) documents the emergence of the local food movement.
• Young farmers find a chance and a voice through the work of Jan Joannides and Renewing the Countryside.

Resources and ideas

An important feature of the blog is acting as a place to share workable ideas for communities. Our own RUPRI colleagues are a wealth of resources on the future of healthcare, defining "rural", rural-urban interdependence, resilience, and why rural America matters to the national economy.

Some of our most encouraging (and popular!) blog posts came from the rural philanthropy crowd. They have good news to offer:

• Jeff Yost (Nebrask Community Foundation) explains how "rural places have an unprecedented opportunity to transform their communities by harnessing the massive transfer of intergenerational wealth".
• Racheal Stuart (Neil and Louise Tillotson Fund) describes how social connections are making philanthropy work better in rural New Hampshire.

Are you looking for connections with movers-and-shakers in rural policy at the national level? Two of our guest bloggers offer an "inside the beltway" perspective:

• The National Association of Counties (NACO) has a Rural Action Caucus that is one voice for rural counties in Washington DC.
• Sandra Rosenblith (Stand Up for Rural America) discusses a challenge for rural communities: senior housing.

Other rural-specific resources featured on the blog include:

• The Entrepreneurship Fund offers professional support for small businesses in rural America.
• Have you heard of the Internet? Tim Collins has, and he's trying to make it work for rural community building.
• Rural places are unique, and Dewey Thorbeck sees the need for a new design discipline for rural America to call its own.

Overall, it's been a great year, and we look forward to the next one. Thank you to all our guest bloggers, and to you, our readers!

If you have an idea for a blog post, please let me know (jensen@rupri.org). In the meantime, keep on reading. And please consider commenting on how your own work or community relates to work and ideas you see featured here.



About the Author

Jen Jensen grew up in suburban Washington State but fell in love with farm life as a kid during yearly summer visits to the Champlain Islands in Vermont. Later, two years in a village as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali, West Africa, forged the link for her between community development and rural issues. Working at RUPRI as a graduate student and now a research analyst has taught her even more reasons to admire and support the diversity, beauty, and resilience of rural people and places.


Visit the Rural Futures Lab website to download informative papers on many of the issues you read about here.

Growing a green economy: How are we doing so far?

By Gary Green and Yifei Li, University of Wisconsin-Madison

As a community development specialist at the University of Wisconsin, I work with many rural communities that continue to be interested in strategies for promoting a green economy. The promise of an economy that creates good jobs, promotes social justice, and improves environmental quality is an alluring one.

Wind turbine factory in Newton, Iowa.

Proponents assume there are strategies for overcoming many of the contradictions and conflicts between economic, social and environmental goals (what some people refer to as the triple bottom line). Yet, the green economy is an enigma because there is little consensus on what these jobs are and how many currently exist.

Over the past several years, we have been looking at the size of the green economy and how communities can be more effective in creating green jobs.

What is a green job?

There is a general consensus in the literature that green jobs have three defining characteristics:

• They contribute to improving environmental quality. Such contribution can be accomplished in many ways. Some jobs deliver products that enhance the environment. Other jobs, such as smart grid operators, involve innovative production processes that reduce environmental harm during production. 
• They are decent jobs. Green jobs are decent not only in economic terms, but also with respect to working conditions, upward mobility, and other factors that impact an employee’s job satisfaction. 
• They require moderate training. Green jobs have relatively low barriers to entry; they are available to individuals with modest skills. The poor can therefore directly benefit from green job initiatives that bring them back into the labor force. Some green jobs require similar sets of skills as traditional blue-collar jobs.

These defining features do not correspond directly to actual job titles, making it difficult to assess the current state of green jobs. As a result, many academics and government agencies have tried to operationally define green jobs, and in so doing, to measure the number of available green jobs.


Barron County, Wisconsin, uses biomass to heat schools.

Examples of green industries include retrofitting, renewable energy, public transportation, and environmental resources management.

Current research

The State of Washington’s Employment Security Department has conducted annual surveys of green jobs since 2009. The Washington studies identify jobs that support four core green areas of activity – increasing energy efficiency, producing renewable energy, preventing and reducing environmental pollution, and providing mitigation or clean-up of environmental pollution. Data are collected from surveys in which employers are asked to self-identify green jobs in their establishments. The most recent wave of the Washington State study (2011) found that green jobs represent a small percentage (4%) of the labor force, and the total number of green jobs has declined.

Several other states, most notably Michigan and Tennessee, have replicated the Washington State study. These studies, however, have reached the opposite conclusion. They note that while green jobs currently constitute a very small portion of the total employment, the growth has been rapid in recent years.

At the national level, green jobs have been estimated with two different approaches.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Green Job Initiative has developed a comprehensive list of 333 green industries, using the North American Industry Classification System. Two types of jobs are considered by the BLS to be green – jobs in businesses that produce goods and provide services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources, and jobs in which workers’ duties involve making their establishment’s production processes more environmentally friendly or use fewer natural resources.

The second approach is the Occupational Information Network (O*NET), which estimates green jobs from an occupational perspective. The analytical focus is thus placed on the “greening” of occupations, that is, the extent to which occupations have changed in the green economy: 

• "Green increased demand occupations" involve the same set of work routines, but the demand for such occupations increase in the green economy. A total of 64 such occupations were identified.
• "Green enhanced skills occupations" require a re-tooling of skills to better function in the green economy. Sixty occupations fall into this category. 
• "Green new and emerging occupations" are newly created occupations in the green economy. The report identified 45 such occupations, in addition to 46 candidate occupations that were previously absent in the O*NET system. 

What we know about green jobs now

It is difficult to accurately define and count green collar jobs, but most studies indicate that the green economy has yet to produce many jobs. The green sector grew at a slower rate than the rest of the economy during the Great Recession. Few of the green jobs are likely to be filled by unemployed or minority workers.

The green sector tends to be concentrated in manufacturing and export industries. These industries are vulnerable to international competition and deskilling like other manufacturing jobs. There is anecdotal evidence indicating green jobs are being outsourced and shifted to low-wage sites.

Green industries are also limited by existing subsidies to fossil fuels, especially to the oil industry. Investments and policies supporting the green economy are generally lagging in the U.S. compared to Europe and East Asia. China, for example, has six of the ten largest green companies in the world and accounts for about one-half of the world’s green jobs today.

Questions to consider for the future

A more fundamental issue is whether a green economy can be based on an economic model that assumes that growth is necessary. Is a green economy only changing the source of energy from fossil fuels to renewable energy or does it have larger implications?

A more sustainable approach to greening the economy needs to consider alternative models that are not as dependent on growth. The issue of green jobs and social justice is complicated by the fact that there also may be conflicts between workers and consumers over the benefits of a green economy. How can we promote a green economy that takes into consideration these conflicts?

About the authors

Gary Green is a professor in the Department of Community & Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Yifei Li is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Visit the Rural Futures Lab website here.

Photos provided by the author.

Creative Ideas for Making Common Core State Educational Standards Work

By Timothy Collins, Assistant Director, Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs, Western Illinois University


The Common Core standards, approved by most states after a push by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, are scheduled to begin rolling out between now and 2014. Without getting into the larger political discussions and controversy surrounding the new standards, I would like to discuss the Common Core’s local ramifications for communities.

One concern, of course, is related to problematic education budgets in the country’s school districts.

A second concern is partly a matter of community control, a deeply held tradition in the United States. The risk of core standards is that they will make all schools alike. But we already have standardized textbooks, based largely on the needs of states such as California and Texas, with their huge school systems. And frankly, it seems to me that many schools have already lost much of their local flavor (keep reading for more on this).

The question of national core standards need not focus on the purely problematic, however. It can be posed in a different way: How can we creatively use these standards to build stronger community schools?

It is how the new standards are used that matters.

The mission of Common Core Standards states:

The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.

First, let’s be realistic about what standards can accomplish. I’m pretty sure not all communities can “compete successfully in the global economy”. Yet most communities want to survive and prosper as best they can. This does not mean isolation from global affairs. It entails a realistic assessment of the community’s assets, especially schools.

The school as community asset

Community schools are vital assets that shape a community’s future. Too often, they educate students using an already standardized curriculum, and many of those students move on, draining the community of the energy and vitality of young adults embarking on their life’s work.

I envision using schools as more than an assembly line. The school can be the heart of the community, using the community’s assets while at the same time building those assets.

Imagine if your school’s curriculum both used the resources of and accounted for its environment, namely your community. A place-based curriculum could teach students about their community, engage students in that community, and bring community members into the classroom as local experts and mentors.

It would require moving beyond standardized texts to build a curriculum that meets the standards and keeps students engaged in their home place. It would help students with different learning styles learn how to work in their community to solve problems and create opportunities, to work together and individually to develop crucial life skills and a better place to live.

The school as community development

Much of the recent community development literature has focused on building a culture of entrepreneurship, where middle-class business leaders revitalize local economies. Research also supports the role of schools in promoting youth entrepreneurs who create their own opportunities to stay in the community. The curriculum I described above has entrepreneurial elements.

Let’s take the idea of school-fostered entrepreneurship one more step. What about community schools that create “earthtrepreneurs,” small business men and women with strong math, science, and technical skills to address environmental quality of life issues and opportunities in and near their backyard?

We can complement those folks with earthtrepreneurial artists and other business leaders who share a passion for a clean environment, but appreciate it in different ways and want to share their appreciation with others inside and outside the community.

Easy? Yes and no.

The standards are there. The willingness of school boards, administrators, and teachers to engage themselves with the community is more problematic.

This approach does take extra effort. It takes creativity and extra dedication. It means retrofitting a model of schools and curriculum that have been around for at least a century to fit the needs of today.

Here are some questions for consideration:

• How does your local school fit into the community?
• Does it educate students not only in the community, but also for the community?
• How could a locally based curriculum be used to improve the school’s standards and ensure the community’s future prospects of improved quality of life?
• What would it take to increase the school’s presence in the community and the community’s presence in the school to help students learn about and appreciate their own back yard?

About the Author

Timothy Collins has been assistant director of the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs since 2005. His roles include research, policy, outreach, and sustainability. He has authored more than 125 publications, reports, and essays on rural issues, including environmental policy, development, sustainable land use, and education. Opinions expressed here are his and his alone.

Visit the Rural Futures Lab at our website. 

Energy Choices and the Long Conversation

By David Kay, Senior Extension Associate, Cornell University’s Community and Regional Development Institute (CaRDI)


I once was blind but now I see
American history was not my strong suit in high school. When I entered graduate school some years later, the already fading sign on my new office (an iconic slogan from the not too distant 1960s) prompted me to “Question Authority”. Since I didn’t quite understand at the time how important it was to understand authority in order to question it, I did not read this as an incitement to historical reflection.

Over the years as an Extension Associate at Cornell University, I developed a medley of insights and thoughts about rural and urban, home rule and regionalism, globalism and relocalization, community and identity. Only in the past few years have I begun to understand how these insights are deeply embedded in what some historians have called “the long conversation”.

This long conversation is about the distribution of collective authority in our democracy. About who gets to participate in and decide about which kinds of public decisions.

The conversation predated the founding of the country by more than a century (see for example, the Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England, May 19, 1643). And it famously animated the debates in the Federalist Papers, that enduring treasure trove of wisdom sparked by the frictions between those who believed in dispersing versus concentrating power and authority.

The United Colonies of New England, 1643 (source).

The long conversation is, in fact, a never ending one. It has no universal, timeless conclusion. This realization has been driven home for me by my recent work on energy transitions.

Some controversies raised by our fossil fuel dependency are in no small measure debates about federalism, or the way authority is divided between central and distributed political units.

What is at stake? According to one author:

The choice of regulatory forum often seems to determine the outcome of the controversy. That may explain why Americans have traditionally shed so much metaphorical and genuine blood deciding what are essentially jurisdictional disputes between governmental institutions.

Consider three contemporary energy examples of the tensions raised.

1. High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (HVHF) for Natural Gas Extraction
Hydraulic fracturing is a technology used to extract oil and gas from “unconventional” reserves of shale and other rocks. State authority dominates regulation of natural gas drilling, but is currently being contested by both federal and local government interests. Federal authority does apply to some aspects of HVHF and many other energy issues. However, the federal Energy Act of 2005 exempted key elements of oil and gas operations from national in favor of state regulation. This outcome is now being challenged.

The authority of states to regulate hydraulic fracturing is also being contested by local governments. In several Northeastern shale gas-rich states, state law appears to “supersede all local laws or ordinances relating to the regulation of the oil, gas and solution mining industries” (NYS Environmental Conservation Law §23-0303(2)).

Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio's state laws feature similar language on the issue. For example, Section 602 of the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Act provides that municipal ordinances may not ‘“impose conditions, requirements or limitations on the same features of oil and gas operations regulated’ by the Act” (Keneally and Mathes, 2010). 

However, in New York State alone, at least two dozen communities have adopted seemingly contrary bans or moratoria. Within each state, the stage of litigation, appeal, and legal clarity on this issue differs.

2. Electricity Transmission
Power plant siting and electricity transmission rules have evolved with less media attention than hydraulic fracturing issues. But even as the Energy Act of 2005 exempted HVHF from federal review, it stipulated that a federal agency (FERC) would hold siting authority for certain electric transmission lines.

The Act was intended to reduce state and local obstacles, including procedural friction and political resistance, to transmission investment. Indeed, major upgrades in transmission infrastructure are projected as necessary to deliver new sources of electricity; most will be generated in rural areas remote from the point of use.

Supporters of grid modernization have advocated strengthening FERC’s authority further. Others remain concerned that good decisions require state and local oversight.

3. Power Plant Siting
Similar issues surround the distribution of authority over the siting of electricity generating facilities. For example, New York State recently passed legislation that shifts permitting jurisdiction for smaller commercial facilities (25-80 megawatts) to the state (i.e., away from local government).

A wind farm nearArmenia Mountain, PA.

Though not differentiated as to fuel source, the implications for wind energy have been given particular attention. Advocates and opponents alike see the legislation as an effort to facilitate the siting of new wind farms, in part by reducing the influence of localized opposition that holds greater sway under local government “home rule.”

Energy Federalism
These examples of contested regulation show some of the pressures being exerted on the status quo of federalism. What criteria, other than short-term political advantage on a particular issue, are or should be used to evaluate whether authority should be assigned to local, state, or federal government, or some combination?

In the Stanford Environmental Law Journal, Benjamin K. Sovocool (2008) offers a list of organizing principles derived from theories of “environmental federalism”. These include such competing goals as: 

• ensuring all affected by the decision are fairly represented, 
• promoting consistency of rules across political boundaries, 
• avoiding unfair imbalances in political power,
• enhancing accountability, and 
• promoting flexibility and innovation.

Versions of these and other arguments are not hard to find in the Federalist Papers.
 
Americans are “spilling blood” in a jurisdictional war over whether local, state, or federal government should control the fate of hydraulic fracturing. Blood pressures have also risen over who should permit moderately sized electric generating facilities and control the siting of natural gas and electricity transmission corridors. 
 
Not infrequently, advocates who argue for or against federal or state or “home rule” in one context reflexively take the opposite position in another. This may make strategic sense in the heat of battle over specific policy decisions about particular energy technologies or fuels or sites. However, a danger exists for partisans and policy makers who fail to lift their line of sight above the battlefield. 
 
Unless principled arguments about the benefits and costs of rebalancing federalism are considered, the distribution of power and passion that lead to precedent and victory in one arena may well simply set the stage for defeat in another. 
 

David Kay, a Senior Extension Associate with Community & Regional Development Institute (CaRDI), was trained as an economist, works in the Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University, and focuses on land use planning and community/economic development issues. He grew up in California’s burgeoning Silicon Valley but settled in Ithaca, New York, after graduate school, not least because of his growing appreciation of the small city’s uniquely combined scale of community and pace of life.

Visit the Rural Futures Lab website here.

The Intergenerational Transfer of Wealth: A Rural Development Priority

By Jeff Yost, President & CEO of the Nebraska Community Foundation

I get asked frequently, “Why are you trying to save these small towns?” The answer is – I’m not. The only folks who can save a community or change a community are the people who live, work and sleep there.

I grew up on a farm near Red Cloud, Nebraska, the youngest of six children. My parents and two sisters still live there. I graduated from high school in 1986 with 23 classmates. Then, like many other small-town kids, I left.

I followed my five older siblings to the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, earned a B.S. in economics and agricultural business. Before joining the Nebraska Community Foundation in 1998, I spent several years working for then-Nebraska Governor Ben Nelson as a gubernatorial aide and strategic initiative manager for community and economic development. It was important work, but frustrating as well.

Politics is a zero-sum game. I prefer win-win solutions to community challenges. And that’s why I am such a strong advocate for rural development philanthropy.

Rural giving and the transfer of wealth

Right now, rural places have an unprecedented opportunity to transform their communities by harnessing the massive transfer of intergenerational wealth. In 2011, the Nebraska Community Foundation worked with the RUPRI Center for Rural Entrepreneurship (CRE) to update its original Transfer of Wealth Study conducted in 2002. That study was the nation’s first statewide county-by-county analysis. This groundbreaking work changed the mindset of philanthropic leaders across the country. Since then CRE has conducted numerous studies on cities, regions and states all around the U.S.

Young people in Shickley, NE (pop. 341) will benefit from $3 million in endowed assets and planned gifts. The community has already secured 20% of its estimated 10-year wealth transfer, and is working to build a $12 million endowment over the next 20 years.

New scenarios for the transfer of wealth opportunity in the U.S. for the period of 2010 through 2060 range from a high of $91 trillion to a low of $43 trillion. The CRE’s most likely scenario estimates $75 trillion. This wealth may be held in real estate, securities, retirement accounts and other assets.

If we set a charitable giving goal of just 5 percent, nearly $3.8 trillion in new community endowments could be built over the next five decades. Once fully capitalized, these endowments could generate nearly $200 billion annually in new grant making! With the decline in local government spending, philanthropic assets could prove to be a community’s most reliable source of funding in the future.

The transfer of wealth is of critical importance to rural places that continue to experience outmigration. In Nebraska, more than 70 percent of our 534 communities lost population in the last decade, according to the 2010 Census.

A local example

For generations, frugal Nebraskans worked hard and saved money for the future. Most lived their entire lives close to their birthplace. One family might occupy the same property, even the same home, for multiple generations. As we are well aware, this is no longer the case.

Over the next 50 years, our state will experience the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in its history. The World War II and the Baby Boom generations own more private wealth than at any time: more than $600 billion in Nebraska.

Some of this wealth will go to taxes. Most will go to heirs. Due to outmigration, many of those heirs no longer live where the wealth was built, and may no longer feel connected to those places. Once intergenerational wealth leaves our communities, it is likely gone forever. However, if it is endowed in community funds, it stays in the community forever, with the earnings available each and every year for emerging needs and opportunities.

The exigent issue for Nebraska and other Great Plains states is timing.

In more than half of Nebraska’s 93 counties, the peak years for wealth transfer are happening now or in the next 10 years.

Andy Anderson of McCook, NE has established an endowment
through NCF to support youth entrepreneurship in his hometown.

That is why we are working so hard to promote and facilitate philanthropy in more than 200 communities across the state. We must act now to encourage charitable investment in the future of our hometowns while the window of opportunity is still open. We must teach, encourage and inspire our citizens to give back today, and include their community in their estate plans for tomorrow.

If only a small portion of our wealth transfer – just 5 percent – were given back through charitable gifts and endowed in community funds, Nebraska would have more than $30 billion within 50 years, generating millions of dollars each year to invest in hometowns where young families can prosper.

The Nebraska Community Foundation

The Nebraska Community Foundation (NCF) is helping people across the state achieve this vision.

Ten years ago, 51 communities were building endowments through NCF with total assets of $4.6 million. Today there are 121 with nearly $40 million endowed. Another $43 million in planned gifts will benefit Nebraska’s communities and organizations in the future.

These communities range in size and geography. What they share in common is local leadership committed to building a future for their hometown.

The Nebraska Community Foundation envisions our state as a place where people can reach their highest potential. Where we can live and work close to family and friends and still stay connected to the world. NCF affiliated funds are using their endowment earnings for grants that make this possible:

• Non-traditional scholarships for adults working in the community
• High-quality affordable childcare to help working parents
• Small business development and transition
• Leadership development and volunteer training
• Value-added curriculum for K-12 schools
• High-quality, accessible health care
• Facilities and programs to help our seniors to age in place
• Arts, recreation and public safety to make our communities places where young families can thrive

I am proud that my hometown of Red Cloud is part of the NCF family of community funds. And that it has launched a community-wide effort to foster leadership, entrepreneurship development, youth engagement, and philanthropy. I am especially pleased that my parents are considering their hometown as a seventh child, by including Red Cloud in their estate plan.

Harnessing 5 percent of the transfer of wealth for the future of our rural places is a reasonable, achievable goal!

For more information about NCF and community giving, visit www.NebraskaHometown.org or check out their videos on YouTube. Join the discussion on Facebook, too!

Visit the Rural Futures Lab homepage here.

Photos provided by the author. 

Alternative Energy in the Land of Oil: Who Benefits?

By Adam Blair, Research Assistant, Cornell University’s Community and Regional Development Institute (CaRDI)

As my car crawled west along Interstate 20 in West Texas, the arid October landscape seemed to stretch outward in a quiet perpetuity, punctuated only by the occasional intersection. It was my first time in the Lone Star State, and the magnitude of the Texas plain weighed down on the vehicle in a way that made me feel like a speck on a map. The vacant horizon left nothing but my odometer as a point of reference.

As I approached Abilene that first afternoon, I encountered towering masses of steel sprouting from the ground, their unnatural appearance invoking a sense of disbelief.

This rural landscape that has supported cotton and cattle since the early 19th Century and petroleum since the 20th continues its legacy as a natural resource-dependent economy with the rapid development of commercial wind energy. Now home to thousands of wind turbines generating enough electricity to power over 2.7 million homes, Texas leads the nation in the expansion of this energy source.

But while the industry is creating jobs, boosting local tax revenues, and providing supplemental income to struggling farmers, I found that this burgeoning enterprise has been largely immune from broader questions concerning long-term community and economic impacts. As a student of city and regional planning, I wondered how, and to what extent, local communities were capturing the wealth generated by the wind energy industry. It was also unclear to me how the benefits derived from wind development—monetary or otherwise—were redistributed amongst local populations.

To begin to answer these and other questions for a Rural Futures Lab case study, I first took the time to understand the important rural-urban linkages that support the energy sector of the U.S. Embodied by the string of electrical transmission lines stretching from the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex to the communities west of the Brazos River—the very route I had just driven—the concept is one familiar to many rural policymakers.

Linkages between rural industries and urban consumers have existed for centuries in the United States, encouraged and even directed to a large degree by the construction of the transcontinental railroads of the mid-19th century and the Interstate Highway System of the mid-20th. And as the nation continues its trend of urbanization, the reliance on rural America’s bounty will become even more prevalent. In a foundation paper authored for the Rural Futures Lab in June 2011, my colleagues and I explored this trend in more detail. We predict that an increasing remoteness of energy generation, driven in part by a transition to more land-intensive, renewable forms of energy, will have profound impacts on rural communities.

My interviews with West Texans confirmed many of the concerns we raised in our report, but also highlighted many of the opportunities discussed in Susan Lurie and Michael Hibbard’s recent blog post on the new natural resource economy (NNRE). For instance, while wind development has been embraced by many landowners, the following comment from a West Texas resident demonstrates just one of many difficulties in achieving the balance between natural resource production and protection described under NNRE: “…you’ll find a lot of places in Central Texas that have chosen not to take wind turbines. Some of them call it eye pollution. They get down there and like the rocky areas and like the clear skies and don’t want to see ’em.”

Equally insightful was my conversation with a small business owner in West Texas. He recognized the importance of using tax revenues generated by the wind energy industry to “improve the quality of life” and consequently mitigate some of the negative boom-bust effects discussed in our foundation paper. However, he noted the difficulty in convincing public officials to do anything but provide tax abatements to lure new, outside firms instead of supporting existing small business in the region.

Of course, only history will tell whether Texas’ newest experiment in rural economic development will result in a windfall or washout for local residents and communities. To ensure equitable benefits, it is imperative that new wealth is captured and reinvested in a way that will improve the quality of life for everyone, for this, one rancher reminds us, “is [the] best thing that can happen to a rural community.”

Urban Escapees: The Future of Rural Communities?

By Katie McCaskey, Urban Escapee and small town grocer

Face it: the "city folk" are moving here.

As we enter an increasingly dense urban future, more urbanites will seek solace in calmer quarters—and, instead of embracing fear, rural residents should grab this opportunity with open arms. "Urban escapees" bring a variety of assets to rural America.

I speak as an urban escapee myself. I lived in three major cities before returning to my rural roots. It's a move that did not appeal to me in my twenties but, as I entered my thirties, grew increasingly enchanting. The move allowed my husband and me to buy property and start a business on Main Street, two things that were fiscally out of reach living in a large metro area. And, unlike previous generations, I had the added advantage to bring my job with me thanks to telecommuting.

In short, retirees are not the only city people who are discovering new opportunities in smaller locations. Mid-career professionals are starting to see untapped value in rural areas, and in the "micro urban" pockets of rural downtowns.

Many have mourned the decay of rural downtowns. But people like me—urban escapees who appreciate compact, city living—see a blank canvas of opportunity improved by several intersecting trends in technology, economy, and ecology.

Micropolitan Manifesto

Staunton, Virginia (population 23,000), where I live, is doing an excellent job of recruiting urban escapees with ambitions to start independent businesses. George Bowers Grocery, our business, was the first loan recipient of the Staunton Creative Community Fund, a microfinance organization. The fund was initially financed by the city. It has grown through a combination of public, private, and grant monies from the state and federal level and supported the start of several businesses.

I strongly believe entrepreneurship is the primary way forward for rural downtowns. I also believe that encouraging urban escapees to apply their experience and resources toward revitalization should be encouraged, not feared. My experience working with my husband to build our business prompted me to write the "Micropolitan Manifesto", a call to artists, change makers, and entrepreneurs.

I invite you to read it, share it, and connect with me if you would like to discuss!


Katie McCaskey is author of the forthcoming book, "Urban Escapee: How to Ditch the Commute, Build a Business, and Revitalize Main Street". Sign up at her site to be notified when the book is released.

Photo: Pat Jarrett

Visit the Rural Futures Lab here.