Cultivating Community Wealth: Strategies for Building Rural Wealth, Part 2

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This post is part of an eight-week series on Cultivating Community Wealth. Strategies summarized in this post include business retention & expansion, tourism, retiree attraction, workforce education, shop/eat local campaigns, and fundraising campaigns. Strategies discussed in last week’s post include industrial recruitment and financial incentives, clusters, value-chain development, community business matching, entrepreneurship including youth entrepreneurship, and regionalism. Recall that particular strategies may be suited to the assets, goals, and values of some communities but not others. Discussion of a strategy does not imply endorsement, and leaders are encouraged… Read More →

Link to Texas Agriculture Law Water Post

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Water is essential to the life of communities. My colleague Tiffany Dowell had a great post on water earlier this week. Read it here and click the Water Law category on her blog (or any other link for that matter) to see more great info.

Cultivating Community Wealth: Strategies for Building Rural Wealth, Part 1

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This post is part of an eight-week series on Cultivating Community Wealth. Why a community “does what it does” is really a statement about the values the community or organization possesses. –Steve Deller in Rural Wealth Creation (p. 161) Wow. Read that one more time. A deceptively simple, intensely powerful sentence. Actions matter. Intentions matter. A community that allows its poor to be further marginalized is making a statement. A community that supports entrepreneurs, volunteers, or youth is also making a statement. Why your community chooses certain wealth… Read More →

Cultivating Community Wealth: Wealth in Our Changing Texas Economy

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This post is part of an eight-week series on Cultivating Community Wealth. “…[I]n the absence of change, the Texas labor force as a whole will be less well educated, work in lower status occupations, and have lower incomes in 2050 than in 2010.” –Murdock, et al. (2014), p. 65 Following last week’s theme of Wealth and Inequality, this week we take a look at the Texas Economy and changes anticipated in the next 35 years. Former state demographer Steve Murdock and co-authors note in their 2014 book that… Read More →

NEA Arts-Driven Community and Economic Development in Rural Areas

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An opportunity to explore an arts-driven approach to community and economic (and wealth) development. The conference call will discuss funding opportunities as well as exemplar projects. Press release below: RURAL GATEWAY PEER-TO-PEER CONFERENCE CALL National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Arts-Driven Community and Economic Development in Rural Areas: A Discussion of Best Practices Date: September 25, 2014 Time: 2:00 p.m. EDT The Office of Rural Housing and Economic Development (ORHED) invites you to take part in our next Peer-to-Peer conference call.  Scheduled for September 25, 2014 this call will offer… Read More →

Cultivating Community Wealth: Wealth and Inequality

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This post is part of an eight-week series on Cultivating Community Wealth. “Understanding the distribution of wealth across and within communities is also critical if community-level interventions are to be most effective in building on existing assets.” —Pender, Marre, and Reeder, 2012, p.6 The previous Defining Wealth post discussed the importance of improving the prosperity of those on the economic margins (described fully in the WealthWorks curriculum). Pender, Marre, and Reeder (2012) note that improving a community’s aggregate wealth may not improve the economic situation of everyone in… Read More →

La Salle County Judge Talks Oil Boom Impacts in Fed’s Southwest Economy

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Judge Joel Rodriquez talks with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’s Southwest Economy about the community impacts of the oil boom in La Salle county. Text is available at http://bit.ly/1nGaka0 and audio clips can be accessed at http://bit.ly/1CJGMSJ. Some interesting perspectives related to topics being covered in the AgriLife NEXT series on Energy.

Cultivating Community Wealth: Defining Wealth and Wealth-building

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Wealth. We usually read about wealth in an individual context. Experts and articles abound, telling us various ways to create and preserve our wealth—our personal assets, particularly financial ones. Recently, we’ve been hearing more about rural wealth and community wealth-building as well. This discussion recognizes the importance of monetary wealth and other financial assets but considers a wider definition of wealth encompassing the well-being of residents. The literature also recognizes that wealth can be a societal as well as an individual asset. This 8-part blog series summarizes some… Read More →

County Migration Flows Mapping Tool

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Last week I mentioned a New York Times graphic describing state-level migration flows. The Census Bureau has released the Census Flows Mapper, a county-level mapping tool. This is a useful tool for county leaders and economic developers as they think about who they are attracting, where out-migrants are going, and how they can leverage regional assets to support regional and local development. Statistically, most moves occur relatively near a base county, which alludes to the regional nature of our economies and social capital. 2008-2012 Net Migration in Brazos… Read More →

Back to School

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First day of the public school year in Texas! A quick video about a walkable school district in Cleveland, Ohio. I love that they talk about not just the health and mental benefits of walking, but the sense of community for kids and parents. Even in suburbs and rural areas where we aren’t going to walk to school, that sense of community is so important. Our schools play an important role in the social fabric of our communities. http://www.upworthy.com/yes-this-town-is-real-yes-its-totally-adorable-and-yes-what-it-did-is-making-kids-happier?c=reccon1