Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Americana
Over the coming weeks, this series will explore a question that sits at the center of rural planning today: what does it take for small towns and rural counties not just to survive, but to build community facilities to help them remain functional, resilient, and economically relevant in a rapidly changing landscape? A Rural Planning […]
Let me tell you about a small town at the edge of the Nebraska Sandhills — a place that quietly demonstrates the true meaning of small town success. Just over 1,000 residents call the community home, yet over the summer many times that number arrive for the Big Rodeo or to spend time tubing the […]
Economic diversification and innovation is a fairly Big Picture topic. In the context of rural economic development, it’s also the kind of conversation that works just as well over friendly debate with libations as it does at a mid-morning coffee club down at the co-op. That conversation is different on Main Street than on Wall […]
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of a Roof Over Your Head If your town can’t house the people it says it wants, it doesn’t matter how many jobs you help create—your economic development strategy has a gaping void. In 2026, “cheap rural housing” is mostly a myth. The real competitive edge for small towns and […]
If you spend any time in the trenches of local government or economic development, you learn pretty quickly that the story on the front page and the story on the ground are not the same thing. The press release might celebrate a new plant or a ribbon cutting, but the real test of a local […]
You’ve seen the headlines—in print or online—heralding the impending doom of Rural America (or Canada, or Australia, or wherever you call home). When I see click-bait like these (hey, even online newspapers have to sell content) I try to pause, breath deeply, and try to work out the context. OK, whatever. But what do the […]
When I say “economic development”, what comes to mind? Is it big industrial plants and multi-million dollar tax incentives? I wouldn’t be surprised. That is so 1960s. Welcome to the later 2020s. For many years now, especially in small towns and rural places, economic development looks a lot more ordinary—and a lot more interesting. It […]
Thank you to Joe Barker for inviting me to join his Rural Strong podcast this week. “John Shepard, If you fail to plan, plan to fail! Our guest on the RuralStrong podcast is John Shepard, a seasoned planning and economic development professional at Marvin Planning Consultants. John has over 30 years of experience across the […]
Rural housing isn’t just one problem, it’s three braided together. Demography is tugging at our small towns with aging neighbors, fewer kids, and new folks drifting in and out on search of jobs and housing. The cost of living rural no longer pencils out for everyone who’d like to be here, especially when wages, materials, […]
The Winter Olympics have returned for their once-in-four year run. While winter weather has mostly passed over the Midwest and Western US for points East, generally outside Florida and Southern California we are a four-season people, like it or not. The Winter Cities movement is a community-building approach which treats cold, snowy winters as something […]
