THE RURBAN FRINGE

Your Project and the Role of Government

All project stakeholders are not equal.
On many projects that I become involved in, almost everyone seems to think that the local government needs to be involved in a key manner. 
This can be good … fostering civic engagement, encouraging two-way communication and helping to further the actions of independent agencies, for instance.  Or this can be bad … with [...]

Farmers Become Ag Educators

In Ontario, a rural leadership and capacity-building project is offering communities, agencies and organizations the opportunity to identify and build the skills of local leaders through a series of relevant program and resource tools.
Part of this project asked rural communities to share what makes their communities great … with Harold and Shelley McPhail – the [...]

Demolition Before Renewal

Like a gardener pruning his plants, sometimes you need to tear something down in order to make it better.
Not the whole thing, mind you, just the rotten parts. 
The boarded-up shopfronts, weedy yards, broken windows and sagging rooftops that blight a community’s landscape.
It’s an urban trend that’s finally trickling down to smaller cities and towns; poorly maintained buildings – [...]

To Grow Small Businesses, Doing What Local Governments Do Best Is Best

Preliminary findings presented by the National League of Cities suggest that local municipal policies that have the greatest impact on small business growth are those that offer regulatory assistance (i.e. ‘one-stop shops’ and streamlined permitting/zoning processes) and those that create a supportive culture between the local public and private sectors.
It’s not rocket science … and it’s [...]

Is Civic Engagement a Dying Dream?

I live in a decidedly rurban area due east of Calgary, Alberta, in one of the fastest growing urban areas in Canada.  My community – like many others across the West – still holds strong ties to an agricultural past and has really only had to deal with the effects of rapid urban growth within the past [...]

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