Looking Back on 2023

This past year has been an eventful year for Rural Resurrection. As usual, a wide range of posts have graced this blog with the intent of helping small-town America thrive. In 2023 we passed 250 posts published as Rural Resurrection entered its fifth year of operation.

This year was also monumental as it marked the start of the Rural Resurrection YouTube Channel.

Implementation Month

Each year we start January with Rural Ressurection’s National Implementation Month. This past year was no exception as Rural Resurrection celebrated the month-long event a fourth time. The month is dedicated entirely to implementing your community plans. This year we discussed the importance of SMART Goals in making sure implementation projects get completed and getting early wins by finding Low Hanging Fruit (Rural Resurrection’s 1st YouTube).

Ghost Towns

The Ghost Towns series continued this past year with another post. It is important to learn from these ghost towns to help us avoid our communities becoming one as well. This year we looked at the interesting story of Gilman, Colorado. It made us think about the importance of considering the potential impacts of an economic base centered on finite resources and diversification. We also checked out some Spooky Planning Terms as Halloween neared.

Another Year of RAGBRAI

Another year, another eventful RAGBRAI in the books! This year’s event unfortunately ended abruptly, but I still announced my RAGBRAI 2023 Winners (as far as communities go) for the event. I was less prepared to write posts about specific towns along the way this year than I was in 2022. But I did write about how important it is to Become a Trail Town.

Two cities from RAGBRAI 2022 were also spotlighted in posts this year as well. Charles City and Emmetsburg were featured in posts. The Emmetsburg post included Rural Resurrection’s second YouTube video with an interview with two of the community’s energetic event organizers.

Downtown Newton RAGBRAI ’23

An Emphasis on Housing

This year, for National Affordable Housing Month, a few posts were published to emphasize the need for additional and affordable housing. First, a challenge was presented to Know Your Midwest Housing Styles. It is important to understand the mix of housing in your community. Knowing the mix will help you understand how your community was built out. It will also help you understand the age of your housing stock, the likely condition, and potential issues that face your community from a housing standpoint.

We also pointed out a couple booklets that AARP has provided on Missing Middle Housing. There’s also Main Street’s Housing Guidebook for Local Leaders. Main Street’s approach of course targets downtowns, many times involving existing buildings, to provide additional housing options.

Solberg Bungalow

Adaptive Reuse

Rural Resurrection also created a couple of additional posts on Adaptive Reuse in 2023. This included a look at how some rural communities are repurposing former Shopko retail stores. We also looked at how some communities have seen adaptive reuse provide new life to closed school buildings.

Conferences and Awards

As always Rural Resurrection reports on the Nebraska Planning Conference as well as the APA National Conference. But things were a little different this year as I received the NPZA President’s Award and APA’s Grassroots Initiative Award. The President’s Award was in part for my work during my tenure as the President of NPZA, but both awards highlighted this blog. The 2023 APA National Conference was in Philadelphia, where I was awarded Carol Thomas for Small Town and Rural Planner Award in relation to Rural Resurrection.

This blog has started to receive some national accolades and I am humbled to receive the awards and hopefully make a difference to rural communities in the Midwest.

5 Years and Counting

It has been five years. Although I published a “coming soon” post in March of 2018, the first real post on Rural Resurrection was on April 3, 2018. That’s when this whole thing started. That first post on RuralResurrection.com wasn’t a literary work of art, but it was a start to something intended to have a larger impact than my sometimes incoherent rambling.

So here’s to the first five years and hopes for five more. As always, when it comes to your community, don’t work to just survive, thrive!