THE RURBAN FRINGE

10 Tips To Promote Your Small Business Through Community Involvement

Promoting a small business is tough. 
With owners often too busy handling the day-to-day business demands, many have neither the time nor the resources to plan for and follow-through on marketing activities.  Yet one thing I’ve noticed – in both long-standing successful businesses and strong start-ups – is a direct level of community involvement of the business/business owner. 
This marketing approach [...]

Ag Boom Misses Small Towns

While many people think small towns and farming activities go hand-in-hand, Adam Belz, in the Des Moines Register, writes otherwise. 
Although agricultural land prices have increased in both Canada and the US, the spin-offs don’t always benefit the communities they surround.  “We have this decoupling of farms from their particular small rural communities,” says Cornelia Flora, a sociology [...]

Tractors on Parade

Ferndale, California is a small town that celebrates Christmas in a big way.
Each year, area farmers decorate their farm equipment with thousands of lights for a uniquely rural Christmas parade!

 

Quality of Life in Small Communities ‘Excellent’

According to a recently released national quality-of-life survey, Canadians are happiest in smaller communities.
In fact, 43% of Canadians living in towns of fewer than 5,000 people rated their quality of life as excellent, compared with only 32% of those in cities of more than 100,000 people.
Overall, we Canadians are a happy bunch … with 86% [...]