Community Development

In this report, authors Mikayla Townsend, Steve Brown, and Carrie Portrie summarize the workshops held with community members to discuss how to make Jaffery, New Hampshire's downtown more welcoming, provide needed resources, and afford economic opportunities.…

This primer offers suggestions for designing and conducting a community-based civic health index (CB Index). A CB Index allows local leaders to determine what is most important or relevant to measure in a particular town or small city and to then collect local data…

In this data snapshot, author Jess Carson finds that rural counties where at least 25 percent of the housing units are for seasonal use are hit especially hard by COVID-19 compared with urban and other kinds of rural counties.

As currently being implemented by the Small Business Administration, the loans made available through the $349 billion Paycheck Protection Program, part of the CARES Act recently enacted to address the COVID-19 crisis, are likely to significantly bypass smaller small…

An ongoing concern in both urban and rural America is the tradeoff between residential and commercial development and the conservation of forestland, shrublands, and grasslands, commonly referred to as greenspace. As communities develop, adding schools, housing,…

As outlined in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, there is an urgent need for mechanisms that effectively scale proven interventions for tackling some of humanity’s toughest challenges (United Nations 2015). While there are exemplary models that have…

This case study provides an overview of Ziweto Enterprises, a social venture using franchising methodology to scale its growth. The goal of this study is to present a clear picture of how the starting stages of a social franchise can expand and thrive in a developing…

Using data from a phone survey of 1,980 Puget Sound residents conducted in 2012, this fact sheet outlines residents’ views about the importance of environmental protection as well as their opinions about energy development, protection of wild salmon, and land use…

Place rebranding is gaining in popularity as cities and rural communities alike attempt to expand their revenue streams through innovative marketing strategies that seek to revitalize or create tourism destinations. These efforts tend to come about as part of an…

Rural communities working to find strategies for success in today's economy need to rethink the tools they are using. Brown-Graham is the executive director of the Institute for Emerging Issues and a policy fellow at the Carsey Institute. William Lambe is the…