Growing Smarter in Rural Communities
The International City/County Management Association (ICMA) recently released a report titled “Putting Smart Growth to Work in Rural Communities”. The piece is intended to provide rural communities with information on how to balance competing demands by supporting rural landscapes, helping existing places thrive, and creating new places.
According to the author, Anna Read, the first step towards understanding the application of smart growth concepts in rural areas is to understand the nature of the problems facing these communities. The trends challenging rural America include: fewer farms and farmers, loss of forest land, rapid growth at metropolitan edges, shrinking population in other areas, access to jobs and services and a lack of transportation options, and limited planning capacity. Many of these challenges are ones we have faced for many decades in West Virginia.
Relying upon the 10 principles of smart growth developed in the 1990’s by the Smart Growth Network the following goals have been developed for application in rural settings:
1. Support the rural landscape – this goal looks at the protection and preservation of natural lands and the creation of an economic network to support their use. Strategies include tax credits for conservation, preferential assessment, buy local campaigns, conservation easements, and rural residential clustering, among others.
2. Help existing places thrive – this goal focuses on maintaining the spaces, assets, and infrastructure that communities’ value. Some of the suggested strategies to achieve this include historic preservation, infill incentives, streetscape improvements, adaptive reuse, and school rehabilitation.
3. Create great new places – the final goal is to build vibrant and enduring communities that people want to live in. This is can be accomplished through visioning, place preservation, open space, walkability, traditional neighborhood development, and green building.
Rural communities like those in WV can take control of their futures by assessing current conditions, engaging the community in a visioning process, and implementing smart growth policies to achieve this community vision. This ICMA report provides a great starting point for imaging how those future visions can become reality.
Download the entire ICMA report