Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Americana
A renovated building on a struggling commercial corridor is easy to see. What is harder to see — and what matters more — is whether the incentive that helped pay for it actually changed the prospects of the people who live there. That question is worth asking now, as the Opportunity Zones economic development program […]
October 2026 series: Transportation & the Comprehensive Plan In hundreds of small towns across North America, you can still read the railroad in the street plan. The grain elevator stands beside the tracks. The old depot sits at the end of Main Street, now a museum, an antique shop, or an empty building waiting for […]
You may be seeing the term “Opportunity Zone” in the news these days. What is that exactly, you might ask? Good question. Opportunity Zones (OZ) are a federal economic development tax incentive — and right now we are in the middle of a major transition with potential for rural development. Created in the 2017 Tax […]
October 2026 series: Transportation & the Comprehensive Plan The grocery store is six blocks away. On the town map, that looks like a short trip. Now imagine making it without a car: the sidewalk ends two blocks from home, the crosswalk across the highway faded out years ago and nobody pays attention to the little […]
I remember driving down Wolf Creek Pass for the first time, back when the switchbacks still ran like CW McCall’s infamous song. Yet I also remember the view from Highway 160 of the San Juan River valley coming off the pass on a star-lit night with the Milky Way in full glory. A dark sky […]
At the edge of a section of irrigated ground on the Great Plains, you can sometimes see the history of a decision. A center pivot that ran a full circle for thirty years now stops short and backs up. Its wheel tracks end where a new set of steel transmission poles crosses the field. Two […]
October 2026 series: Transportation & the Comprehensive Plan You know the moment. You’ve been driving a state highway for twenty minutes through open farmland—center pivots, a grain elevator on the horizon, a pickup or two coming the other way—when a green sign tells you you’ve arrived: Welcome to …, followed by a population figure, maybe […]
October 2026 series: Transportation & the Comprehensive Plan Every few years, the price at the pump becomes the loudest number in town. People talk about it at the diner, the school board hears about bus budgets, and the county road department recalculates what a season of grading and plowing will cost. Usually the spike passes. […]
Four Sundays. One development proposal. Four different layers of the same question. We started with a farmer’s heirs who wanted to sell. We followed that proposal through the future land use map, through agricultural land use policy, through the gap between the zoning code and the comprehensive plan, and finally through the thirty-year cost calculation […]
What makes the place you live different from every other place out there? It’s not the Taco John’s out on the strip. It’s not the dollar store, or the strip mall, or the Starbucks. It’s the red brick commercial buildings around the courthouse square, in so many American communities built in that common pattern. It’s […]
