News Release For Immediate Release ANNUAL NATIONAL ECONOMIC GARDENING CONFERENCE TO BE HELD IN ORLANDO MAY 19/20 Attendees Will Learn How to Develop Viable Programs to Help Strengthen Their Communities, Regions and States (Orlando, FL) — The Florida Economic Gardening Institute in conjunction with the University of Central Florida will host the 9th Annual National […]
Sen. Klobuchar speaks to MIRC
Minnesota’s Senator Amy Klobuchar spoke at lunch for the Blandin Foundation’s MIRC project at an event organized by the University of Minnesota Extension Service in St. Cloud Wednesday. It was my first time hearing the Senator. Thought she did a pretty good job with a brief talk on broadband in rural Minnesota. She spoke to […]
Kotkin and Florida: Two Sides of the Same Prosperity
[v=zWHUsXQyLZs] How are we ever supposed to improve our economic situation if we can’t even agree on what the problems are? Here we are, a good two-three years through the Greatest Recession/Depression/Indigestion since the 1930s and we’re still arguing about who did what tho whom when. The trouble with current events is they’re just too […]
APA STaR Publishes MIRC Story
This article was published last week in the newsletter of the Small Town and Rural Planning division of the American Planning Association. You can find them on Facebook, too. Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities: Broadband as a Rural Development Strategy By John C. Shepard, AICP, Southwest Regional Development Commission America’s economy runs on broadband. Ninety-five […]
Fixing the Future, Today
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy—also affectionately known as the Lincoln Land Institute—is a Cambridge, Mass, think tank active in “issues involving the use, regulation, and taxation of land.” Their material tends to be a bit esoteric (i.e. “We explore the effects of land value taxation and the practical, administrative, and political issues raised by […]
Wind Energy Looking Up For 2011
Press Release U.S. wind energy industry finishes 2010 with half the installations of 2009, activity up in 2011, now cost-competitive with natural gas Industry weathers latest boom-bust cycle as utilities move to lock in more wind power at favorable long-term rates Washington, D.C. – America’s wind industry built 5,115 megawatts of wind power last year, […]
Lifetime Value of a College Degree
Urban Planning job prospects and other degree salary information by Online Degrees At my house we’re going thru that great American rite of passage, college admissions and financial aid applications (supplication). I have some strong opinions (you never would have guessed from my blog, no?) but think I have been trying hard not to be […]
Urbanomics: A trend in brief
Although I’m an urban planner in a rural region, I still pay attention to global trends in development—who is growing how where. Trends by their very nature tend to pop up from unexpected places. It’s almost impossible for a cadre in some global center like New York or London to manufacture a real trend. They […]
How we've blown up our cities
Fellow Minnesotan Charles Marohn, a recovering professional engineer, blogs today on some of the changing ways that we Americans build places. It is striking how the path of our economic development and the path of our physical development are so similar. In the age of Hamilton, we certainly had planning. Thomas Jefferson not only planned […]
Buy Ag Land? They ain't making any more of it
An interesting news bit from the Red River Farm Network‘s FarmNetNews newsletter: Land Values Called Unbelievable — The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City says farmland values in the Plains increased in the third quarter due to generally rising farm incomes and robust demand for land. Murray Wise, with Murray Wise Associates, sells farmland. “The […]