The implications of rapid change in rural areas demand an effort on the part of planner educators to prepare professional planners for new, transactive roles with skills to build the capacity of communities to become self-reliant. As one of the partner institutions working collaboratively in rural development and planning with the Partnership for…

Findings from current literature form the basis for this examination of five critical elements of change and development within the local community setting which impact on agriculture: population, employment, land, water, and environment. Renewed rural population growth during the 1970's has reversed small farm trends but placed strains on local…

To compare various socio-demographic indicators and attitudes on community issues of recent urban to rural migrants with those of native residents, personal interviews were conducted with an adult in 3391 households in the 5 county Meramec Area of Missouri during the fall of 1977. Of the respondents, 24% had lived in the county 7 years or less,…

Voluntarism, a concept rooted in the Puritan Ethic, is that ethos which assigns welfare functions for persons without adequate means to voluntary agencies, and voluntarism along with cultural pluralism must be curbed if exodus of the rural farm population is to be mitigated. With the exception of the Old Age and Survivor's Insurance Program, the…

The series of papers grew out of a Rural Economic Development Planning workshop conducted on the Oklahoma State University campus, July 1971, for personnel in agencies actively engaged in applying and disseminating rural development research. The first four papers supplied basic information to workshop participants: Rural development was defined…

This paper discusses the use of gender analysis to ensure that economic development policy has equitable consequences for women and men, and describes the role of nonprofit community organizations in promoting such analysis. Gender analysis assumes that role differences between men and women are socially defined and therefore open to change.…

In October 1999, the Regional Australia Summit was held in Canberra to allow people from regional, rural, and remote areas to contribute their perspectives on the challenges facing rural Australia. The Summit aimed to develop a national appreciation of those challenges, gather ideas on meeting the challenges, establish goals, and identify roles…

Technological change, globalization, and localization have changed rural economies. They have increased labor productivity, reducing the importance of labor costs in location decisions; decreased the importance of distance; increased the importance of economies of scale; and increased the role of local conditions and choices in determining…

This paper lays out a rationale for building local rural development policies that focus on potential strengths of school-community relationships, while empowering local citizens. Rural communities and their schools are caught up in trends that complicate policy at all levels. These trends include changes related to national and global economic…

This report describes an educational partnership between South Dakota State University and Capital University Center, Inc. (CUC), (Pierre, South Dakota). CUC is a nonprofit organization founded in 1982 to provide access to higher education for residents of rural central South Dakota. CUC contracts with South Dakota State University for educational…

Knowledge of major economic forces shaping the future of rural America provides insights about the likely importance and effectiveness of various broad program alternatives as components of a rural development policy. The rural economic base was transformed during the 1960s and 1970s from a primary dependence on natural resource activities,…

Since the advent of the 1980s, the economic viability of many farm operations has been severely jeopardized. Although attention has been directed primarily to the Midwest, in many respects farm stress has been greater in the South than in any other region. What is clear, however, is that the crisis is not strictly an agricultural one. Rather, a…

This profile summarizes the responses of 20 managers of rural business incubators, reporting on their operations, entry and exit policies, facility promotion, service arrangements and economic development outcomes. Incubators assist small businesses in the early stages of growth by providing them with rental space, shared services, management and…

A study of the process of a 1977-1983 oil and gas boom in Caldwell, Texas, disproved the assumption that local social effects of rapid energy development are severe and negative. Using interviews, surveys, observation, local newspapers, and other writings as data sources, researchers determined that during the boom, Caldwell's population grew…

Problems inherent in international rural development cooperative efforts are those caused by the international mix of participants, difficulties in intercultural communication, and cultural biases of western teaching contents and methods. A 6-month program established in 1982 at the International Agricultural Center at Wageningen, Netherlands,…