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 […]
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 […]
How Small Towns Can Plan for People, Land, and Legacy This article continues our November series: From Ideas to Action — A Month of Praxis and Implementation in Rural Communities. In week three, we focus on turning planning theories into useful rural zoning strategies — the essential tools that help small towns manage growth, protect […]
