Planners like to plan, and economic developers like to develop, but at the end of the day it’s about what we do to implement the plan that gets things done. Becky McCray and Deb Brown are practical people from small towns who are not planners—they are do-ers. Their mission is to help people get things done.
They talk about their three-step “Idea Friendly Method”. You don’t need a committee. You just need to get started:
1. Gather your crowd
2. Build connections—create a network
3. Take small steps (learn by doing)
From Possibilities to Reality: Save Your Small Town …With These Uniquely Do-Able Ideas, Projects, and Success Stories
Deb decided to riff on that idea with a practical workbook to help folks to put the Idea Friendly Method to work. From Possibilities to Reality: Save Your Small Town …With These Uniquely Do-Able Ideas, Projects, and Success Stories combines lessons learned and stories told about real ideas in real communities across the country with prompts you can use in your own crowd.
The workbook is organized in eight sections:
- Bring People Together
- Community
- Youth and Young Families
- Art as Economic Development
- Empty Buildings
- Business
- Promotion and Marketing
- Funding
Here’s an example, from the very first section—Inclusive gathering spaces and events help bring people together. OK, all of us Small Town & Rural Planners should be on board with that. One idea is to bring together nonprofits and organizations which sponsor events to compare calendars every so often. Then Deb gives us a couple success stories from Wall, South Dakota (population 695) and Ringgold County, Iowa (population 4,670). Finally, we get some tips to be Idea Friendly, and prompts for thoughtful note-taking.
Section 2 starts out with ideas on shared values, the fabric of a rural community, and the bonds of the natural environment and shared experience. You can work with that, you know you can.
Learn more at https://saveyour.town/
(This review originally appeared in the APA Small Town & Rural Planning Division newsletter, Fall 2024. You can get yours directly on Amazon.com and at other fine booksellers, but I bought mine direct from Deb.)