News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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For the past decade, the media has been obsessed with the idea of a growing divide between rural and urban areas, often portraying it as a deep chaasm separating the nation’s citizens. A recent example of this coverage took it a step further. Not only are we portrayed as divided, but there are now suggestions that we should make it official through a divorce. Case in point: the Greater Idaho Movement, an effort by its supporters in eastern (rural) Oregon to secede from Oregon and join Idaho. The grounds for the divorce? The rural-urban politica...
Communities in every corner of the country now struggle with a lack of affordable homes, an ailment long associated with fast-growing urban areas. A lack of affordable housing hamstrings rural towns’ abilities to attract workers and slows business growth. Quality housing is also linked to health and well-being, and home ownership remains a primary way working people build equity and ownership. Small towns need affordable, quality housing for people across the financial spectrum. Solving this shortage will require multifaceted solutions, c...
Dollar General has become a ubiquitous feature of America’s small towns. The discount retailer is opening about 1,000 stores per year, with more than 16,000 spread across the country. Many local economic developers see the discount retailer as a threat to local retail. Other economic developers argue Dollar General creates jobs and helps keep shoppers in town. I get it. In thousands of miles spent traversing the rural Midwest, I have found myself in small towns with no other retail or grocery options. The irony is that this solution makes t...
Each of the past several elections has thrust rural people into the media spotlight. Rural and urban people are divided, the pundits tell us. Neither understands the lives of the other, the news reports read. I find the entire narrative rather tired. It is rife with inaccuracies that I won’t try to unpack here. It is also a distraction. Spending our energy debating an unhelpful caricature of cultural divides keeps both voters and policymakers distracted from making changes that matter. I suggest we focus our energy instead on a simple q...
There are two closely held, widely believed, narratives about rural America. The national media narrative, with roots in the 1980’s farm crisis, is fatalistic. Rural places are dying. It lives on at the Brookings Institute and the New York Times, fueled by demographics that show decades of population decline across much of rural America. The other narrative is woven by small town boosters. They point to new demographic data showing 30-49 year olds returning to small towns. They talk with passion about new businesses and housing shortages. T...
