Top 10 - Reasons Rural Community Development is Hard to Do
Top 10 Reasons Rural Community Development is Hard to Do...
by Michael Holton, Center for Rural Affairs, michaellh@cfra.org
For the past three years, the Center for Rural Affairs newsletter has carried a monthly column by Michael Holton focused on rural community revitalization. S ome articles referred to community development successes, while others related various struggles that come with the territory in community development. This month, Michael uses his experiences and insights to define the top 10 reasons rural community development is so difficult to accomplish.
These are the reasons Michael outlines:
1. People Don’t Understand What Community Development Is
2. Agencies Overlook Differences between Rural and Urban
3. Community Gate Keeper Resistance
4. Change Is Not Comfortable
5. Parochial Attitudes Must Be Overcome
6. Lack of Resources and Capacity
7. Negative Attitudes
8. Lack of Participation across the Generations
9. Confused Purpose of Existence
10. Lack of Leadership Capacity
you can read the full explanation for each at www.cfra.org/newsletter/current.htm
Agree? Disagree? Post a comment here or contact John Crabtree, johnc@cfra.org
Center for Rural Affairs
Values. Worth. Action.
by Michael Holton, Center for Rural Affairs, michaellh@cfra.org
For the past three years, the Center for Rural Affairs newsletter has carried a monthly column by Michael Holton focused on rural community revitalization. S ome articles referred to community development successes, while others related various struggles that come with the territory in community development. This month, Michael uses his experiences and insights to define the top 10 reasons rural community development is so difficult to accomplish.
These are the reasons Michael outlines:
1. People Don’t Understand What Community Development Is
2. Agencies Overlook Differences between Rural and Urban
3. Community Gate Keeper Resistance
4. Change Is Not Comfortable
5. Parochial Attitudes Must Be Overcome
6. Lack of Resources and Capacity
7. Negative Attitudes
8. Lack of Participation across the Generations
9. Confused Purpose of Existence
10. Lack of Leadership Capacity
you can read the full explanation for each at www.cfra.org/newsletter/current.htm
Agree? Disagree? Post a comment here or contact John Crabtree, johnc@cfra.org
Center for Rural Affairs
Values. Worth. Action.
posted by Center for Rural Affairs @ 10:59 PM
7 Comments:
At 11:22 PM,
Anonymous said…
what does community gate keeper resistance mean (#3)?
it doesn't make any sense to me?
At 11:34 PM,
Anonymous said…
This is what Mr. Holton said about #3
Rural communities are made up of a social group called the gate keepers. This may prove to be one of the most difficult aspects of community development in small rural towns.
Gate keepers are usually people who have lived in the community for years, often clear back to the time when small rural communities were thriving. They made a living and prospered while raising their children. The community was and is still good to them. They do not want to see new community development come in and take away what they have acquired.
These people often resist big changes with statements like, “We don’t need that!” or “It was good enough for me when I was growing up.” The key to dealing with the gate keeper plight is to involve them from the beginning in the discussion and work.
At 9:47 AM,
Anonymous said…
i don't think rural communities are "made up of gate keepers"
there may be people like that in every community, urban and rural, but rural communities are not "made up of gate keepers"
At 11:28 PM,
Anonymous said…
and every community has someone telling them "I'm from the government and I'm here to help..."
that doesn't help rural communities in the long run either...
At 1:39 PM,
Anonymous said…
i could be wrong, but i think that one of the things that has bothered several people in several of these discussions is the habit of economic development types to walk into a community and say "what this town needs is..."
not only does that seems to cause as many problems as it fixes, i feel that it contributes to the gate-keeper response - when a bunch of development types are running about saying do this and do that and what's wrong with this community is... When you see enough of that it is difficult to avoid one of the "gate-keeper" symptoms (namely, "there's nothing wrong with this community, people just don't appreciate what we have...").
Also, one healthy aspect of the "gate-keeper" ,if it is not taken too far, is the recognition that many answers to challenges in our communities are best handled by the people that live there.
Whiting, Iowa
At 9:24 PM,
Anonymous said…
That is the most difficult question in this discussion, i think, determining what a rural community wants and needs and finding ways to help them help themselves in attaining it - we measure so many things in terms of growth, economic growth, population growth, etc.
I often wonder, are these "growth" oriented strategies a good measure of progress in a community?
I knew a farmer once who said, "we're not opposed to progress, we're opposed to change. Change is something that happens to you, and progress is something you participate in..."
At 12:59 PM,
Anonymous said…
what the hell does a community do about lacking leadership?
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