NLC Report Highlights Rural Challenges

There are a number of organizations out there that are supportive of communities around the nation. The National League of Cities (NLC) is one of those organizations.

NLC calls itself “the voice of America’s cities, towns and villages” as they represent numerous communities around the nation. They work to help improve leadership in communities and work with federal leadership as well as a voice for the cities that they represent. The League also runs the Center for City Solutions which provides research and analysis to communities on a variety of topics.

The NLC State of the Cities Report

Each year the National League of Cities puts out an annual report entitled the State of the Cities Report. Within the report, NLC discusses a number of the issues that communities have fought through over the past year. It also provides some narrative as to the approaches that need to be taken to overcome those issues.

Their analysis for this year’s report comes from a number of sources, from surveys to mayoral speeches, to gather a feel for the needs of communities throughout the United States. The results, both negative and positive, aren’t so much surprising as they are more confirming that our communities are struggling with the same issues:

Top positive conditions that most supported communities through the pandemic:

• Home property values
• Availability of parks, recreation, and green space
• Access to clean water
• Remote work
• Sales tax collections

Top negative conditions that most challenged communities over the past year:

• Affordable housing supply
• Inactive/vacant commercial developments
• Infrastructure funding
• Price of rentals/apartments
• Total general fund revenue

What stuck out to me this year was one section that highlighted the issues that small towns are having a commercial decline. The retail apocalypse is hitting every town, but small towns have taken some of the hardest hits on this issue.

The report speaks to the importance to rural communities of creating vibrant downtowns and creating a sense of place. Reinforcing this is a major key to sustaining local tax bases and employment. Vibrant downtowns and other community-centric areas have long been important to rural communities, but their importance to long-term community vitality has grown even more over the past couple of years.

Outpost Economy

However, it did discuss a possible positive outcome of the pandemic on smaller towns and villages. As quickly as remote working has evolved over the past year, more and more workers have stated interest in moving to smaller communities. This is exciting to some as it points to the possibility of an “outpost economy” is where workers are less concentrated in large cities and more spread among smaller towns that offer a better quality of life. However, to NLC’s researchers, it doesn’t look like the complete evolution to an “outpost economy” is happening anytime soon.

Read It

There is plenty more to read in the State of the Cities 2021 report. It is not a long report, but it has some good information to keep at the front of your mindset moving forward. Take the time to read it when you can.