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An embarrassing story about community engagement and dialogue

By Paula Jensen

Chairs and tables set up for a town board or city council type meeting

By Paula Jensen Quite simply, community dialogue is an exchange of ideas and experiences through listening, sharing, and questioning. At its best, community dialogue is created in a safe environment where a diverse group of people gather to talk and understand each other. Community dialogue at its worst looks something like the embarrassing story I […]

April 1, 2022 Filed Under: community, economic development, rural Tagged With: community engagement, guest post, leaders, officials, Paula Jensen

Way more people prefer rural than urban, new Pew Research study finds

By Becky McCray

Pew Research chart showing preference for cities has declined, a growing share now favors suburbs, and many more prefer rural than urban

Pew Research released a major rural vs urban study, and the headlines missed the best bits. Pew Research’s new social trends study has shown up in a lot of news stories with widely varying headlines. Pew themselves titled it “Americans Are Less Likely Than Before COVID-19 To Want To Live in Cities, More Likely To […]

February 1, 2022 Filed Under: community, rural, trends Tagged With: challenges, community, future, Pew Research, rural, studies, trends

What to do with a building that’s falling down: The roofless Royal Theater in Archer City, Texas

By Small Biz Survival

Archer City, Texas, Royal Theater, side view facade and roofless building behind

A building that is falling down or where the roof has fallen in can still be useful. One example is the Royal Theater, in Archer City, Texas. The Royal Theater was featured in the movie “The Last Picture Show,” and production crews did the work to shore up the facade. The space behind has a […]

January 23, 2022 Filed Under: community, rural, tourism Tagged With: downtown, event space, historic preservation, roofless buildings, Sheila Scarborough, tourism

Top 5 Rural and small town trends 2022

By Becky McCray

Who knows what trends will affect small and rural communities in 2022 and beyond? Not many trends pieces cover rural places. These trends are specifically about rural and small towns. I’ve been following rural trends and writing about them since 2009. My trends reports have been commissioned or quoted by Main Street America, Emergent Research, the […]

January 3, 2022 Filed Under: community, economic development, entrepreneurship, POV, rural, trends Tagged With: Becky McCray, Climate, community development, future, nature, neighboring, news, remote work, rural, rural migration, rural sourcing, rural trends, small towns, trends, zoom towns

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