Youth and aging

This CIRD-created document tracks potential funding opportunities and resources for various rural-related community design challenges. It will be updated periodically as new resources are identified.

Source: Orton Family Foundation. This guide helps to identify the people and organizations which can either support or be influenced by community projects. It provides a framework for doing a stakeholder analysis, describing how to tap into different demographics in your community, and for making use of the connections among different community groups.

Source: Center for Rural Design University of Minnesota Author: Dewey Thorbeck Summary: Rural areas in North America are undergoing profound demographic, economic, cultural, and environmental change, creating considerable challenges and stress for their residents and on the ecosystems upon which they depend for their livelihoods and quality of life.

Source: NET - Nebraska’s PBS and NPR stations Author: New News and Harvest Public Media This panel discussion surveys the key challenges and opportunities facing rural America. Guests present their views about a range of topics, such as the need to diversify rural economies beyond agriculture, how to cope with a declining population, useful strategies for improving local community leadership, and the importance of collaborating with neighboring communities.

Source: The Orton Family Foundation This quick guide takes users through strategies for developing viable partnerships for community planning projects. A strong, healthy partnership between organizations or individuals can bolster resources, talent and energy, although a weak or dysfunctional partnership can just as easily be detrimental to a project.

Economically resilient towns, cities, and regions adapt to changing conditions and even reinvent their economic bases if necessary. This resource features case studies from seven distinct communities and the strategies they employed to re-energize their economies.

This document produced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2012 provides policy options that can help rural communities strengthen their economies while preserving rural character. These policies can help rural communities ensure that their development is fiscally sound, environmentally responsible, and socially equitable.

The guide provides clear examples of how to interpret and apply design flexibility to improve bicycling and walking conditions and presents compelling photographs, visual illustrations and technical diagrams to communicate design issues and solutions in a smaller scale setting.