Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Americana
The development application is straightforward on paper. Twelve residential lots on forty acres of prime ag land, five miles outside of town. The heirs of the family that farmed it want to sell. A developer has found buyers. The parcel is accessible from a county road. No wetlands. No floodplain. Nothing obviously wrong. The planning […]
The call comes on a Tuesday afternoon. Three siblings have inherited a half-section of ground from their mother, and they all moved to California or Texas years ago. A developer has offered to buy the west forty for twelve rural home sites of three acres each, on a gravel road five miles from the nearest […]
Part 4 of 4 in our July series on Natural Resources and the Comprehensive Plan. Every year, somewhere in rural America, a family farm changes hands. Sometimes it stays a farm or ranch. Sometimes it becomes fifty or five hundred new houses. Most comprehensive plans never influence that decision — not because they lack good […]
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 […]
In small towns and rural communities, the future doesn’t just happen—it’s shaped by the choices people make. Good planning powers good governance by ensuring rural communities grow thoughtfully and resiliently. Effective public policy is essential to good governance— good planning in rural communities isn’t a luxury; it’s essential. Whether through action or inaction, every town is […]
