Posts Tagged ‘rural renewal’
A New Hotline for Rural BC!
The BC Rural Centre has a new direct phone number to call when you need to talk to someone about Rural Issues, Challenges, Opportunities, and Inquiries. Over the past few months, the BC Rural Centre has been adjusting to a few key changes, new staff, including a new Executive Director and a revisit of the…
Read MoreOkanagan Correctional Centre: Creating Jobs
Future Food: Getting Beyond the Energy Blindness of Techno-Utopianism
(The following is adapted from The Future is Rural: Food System Adaptations to the Great Simplification, by Jason Bradford. How’s this for a party-stopper: Contrary to the forecasts of most demographers, urbanization will reverse course as globalization unwinds during the 21st century. The eventual decline in fossil hydrocarbon flows, and the inability of renewables…
Read MoreOne Maine Town Tees Up New Economic Development
Biddeford, Maine, saw a dramatic economic turnaround after the Orton Foundation’s Community Heart & Soul program helped shape the town’s Master Plan. Biddeford’s Economic Development Director, Daniel Stevenson, talks about how having a solid road map opened the door for $78 million in new projects downtown, including a hotel, new businesses, apartments, and shops. …
Read MoreExperiential Tourism?
A conversation with Dana Blouin of Between a Lake & a High Place. Not every rural citizen is a fan of tourism as an economic driver. But most rural folks would agree that the sort of experiential tourism advocated by Dana Blouin and her husband, François — tourism that respectfully celebrates local culture, talent,…
Read MoreColumbia Lake Tech Centre — the Podcast
As many rural communities struggle to reinvent their economies in the wake of wrenching change, the small BC town of Canal Flats has embraced new & emerging technologies as a means of establishing a new economic base for the town and surrounding East Kootenay region. In this BC Rural Centre podcast, Brian Fry, the co-founder…
Read MoreABCDE, a la Peter Kenyon!
“Shift the development mindset from needs and deficiencies to assets and capacities — from consumer, customer, and client, to co-producer, co-owner, and citizen.” Peter Kenyon If your rural or remote community can use a boost, here are some primers, courtesy one of the world’s leading asset-based community development advocates, Australia’s Peter Kenyon. …
Read MoreSmall Towns Refuse to Die
Some small towns offer $1 lots, tax breaks and guaranteed loans to win over newcomers for a chance to prove they are islands of growth that matter to Canada’s future, says Joe O’Connor in this Financial Post article. Jay Patel decided about four years ago he wanted to buy a motel. He was living in…
Read MoreRural Innovation & Youth Attraction
If rural communities are to survive — let alone prosper — in the 21st century, they need to innovate. And through that innovation, attract a new wave of creative, entrepreneurial Millennials to our small towns and rural regions. This audio version of a BC Rural Centre webinar features two inspiring advocates of rural innovation —…
Read MoreYouth Exodus to Art Epicentre?
What kind of future should a struggling rural town choose? In the town of Green River, Utah, population 950, a nonprofit called Epicenter aims to use art and architecture to bring youthful new energy, life, and economic development to the community, as Jeffrey Brown reports in this PBS video.
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