THINKING REGIONALLY, ACTING LOCALLY:
EMERGING RURAL REGIONS IN THE U.S.
 

Rural development strategies that focus primarily on individual communities or industries are being rethought as rural leaders across the U.S. explore initiatives that pool rural resources in the pursuit of regional economic development goals.

Kendall McDaniel, associate economist at the Center for the Study of Rural America, examines the reasons behind this new approach and explores four emerging rural regions in May’s edition of The Main Street Economist. The Main Street is published by the Center, which is based at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

This phenomenon of thinking regionally but acting locally is still relatively new, McDaniel notes, but many rural towns are benefiting from regional planning that helps sparsely populated rural areas expand the size and skills of workers, businesses and leaders.

“Several rural towns are realizing that neighboring towns, who once were chief rivals on the football field or basketball court, face the same economic and fiscal foes,” McDaniel writes.

The author explores four regional initiatives: the Prairie States Region, which encompasses parts of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas that started as a conservation initiative but is evolving into a comprehensive regional program; Opportunity Works, a new regional initiative geared toward finding new economic opportunities in northeast Iowa; Southeast Kansas Inc., a 13-county coalition providing numerous services in the most distressed rural region of Kansas; and an effort to bring digital Internet connections to Morgan County, Colorado 80 miles east of Denver.

Because identifying and tracking emerging rural regions can help inform public policymakers and encourage other rural leaders, May’s edition of The Main Street Economist is the first in an occasional series focusing on emerging rural regions in the U.S.

This article and past issues of The Main Street Economist are available on the Bank’s Web site at www.kansascityfed.org.

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