Rural America

Where is Rural in the Green New Deal?

Among the packed agenda of the 2019 Democrat-held House, one particular project went from barely noticed to hotly debated almost overnight: The Green New Deal (GND). The deal is an ambitious social, economic and industrial reform program being proposed as a potential catch-all solution to current climate change regulations and […]

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Rural Drivers Can Save the Most From Clean Vehicles

This post was written in collaboration with Maria Cecilia Pinto de Moura The transition to clean vehicle technologies such as electric vehicles will benefit consumers everywhere, promising lower operating and maintenance costs, along with less pollution and a cleaner environment. But the drivers with the greatest economic potential to gain by […]

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Rural ‘Recreation Counties’ Show More Population Resilience

From 2010-16 nonmetropolitan America lost population. But counties that have recreation economies (hiking, whitewater, climbing, four-wheeling, etc.) grew slightly over the same period, according to a new report from Headwaters Economics. Rural counties with recreation-based economies are gaining population slightly while non-recreation rural counties are losing population, a new study finds.   Households moving to rural […]

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How Do You Reinvent a Rural Economy? $100 at a Time

“Explore Elkin” takes small individual investments and parlays them into bigger returns for the old mill town of Elkin, North Carolina. Instead of a pop and a fizzle, the program has created a slow burn of special events, marketing, and accurate self-promotion. The invitations, hundreds of them, had been sent. Ads were […]

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