MAIN STREET & DOWNTOWN
ECONOMIC & BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
What Midwest Industrial Communities Can Teach About Managing Economic Change
With a great convergence on both sides of the Atlantic around the urgent need to diminish geographic economic disparities and opportunity gaps — particularly those between thriving global city regions and struggling communities in industrial heartlands – there are growing efforts to learn from each other.
PODCAST
Inside Our Towns: Scott and Tiffany Whaley
Feeding, sustaining, and building community in Kershaw, South Carolina through KARE.
COMMUNITIES THAT WORK
Kershaw invests in community with new ideas in old spaces
A train depot that’s a museum. A bank branch building that’s become a library. Another former bank that is serving as an early education center. Here is how this South Carolina town is repurposing buildings of the past to build up its future.
COMMUNITIES THAT WORK
How one small Ohio town practices democracy
Small is big in Mount Blanchard, Ohio. The town approached change in two ways, and Deborah Fallows reports on the impact she and her husband, James, saw during their travels there.
PODCAST
Inside Our Towns: Tighe Bullock
Evan Sanford catches up with Tighe Bullock, the accountant, lawyer, downtown developer, and construction contractor, on his latest work in Charleston, West Virginia.
CIVIC LIFE
To Both See and Tell the Country: From the Road through North Carolina to South Carolina
Why seeing more of America matters.
CIVIC LIFE
'To Arrive Where We Started and Know the Place for the First Time'
The America that Americans Don't Know About, and Why That Matters
EDUCATION
Real Mississippi podcasts: You Can Go Back Home Again
Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science student Raegan Calvert explores the challenges and opportunities in her hometown of Wiggins, Mississippi
COLLABORATIONS & PARTNERSHIPS
Story Maps are at the Center of Community Collaboration in Kent, Ohio
New digital tools give communities innovative and engaging ways to tell their own stories. In Kent, Ohio, a community-wide collaboration among Kent State University, Main Street Kent, and the Kent Historical Society & Museum uses story maps to teach residents about the town's rich history.
CIVIC LIFE
Small towns win big honors: De Smet & Bucksport
Two small towns come out strong in a national poll. They're among our favorites, and we're glad for these results.
ECONOMIC & BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Tighe Bullock is working to building a vibrant, attractive downtown in West Virginia’s capital city.
Revitalizing Charleston, West Virginia Brick by Brick
TRANSPORTATION
Reviving the economy, restoring community, and helping sustainability: a plan.
Two Republican presidents -- Abraham Lincoln, and Dwight Eisenhower -- offered bold new approaches to transportation as part of their national strategy. A proposal
ECONOMIC & BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
When a Company Invests in an ‘Underdog City’
The story of how a company that started in one of these places is now involving people and businesses in another—and why that matters in the next stage of equitable American recovery.
Economic & Business Development
The University of Dayton Is Reinventing Town-Gown Relations
Archway Entrance for the University of Dayton, in Ohio. “The city is in our name,” says the university’s president. “It’s our future.” (Courtesy of the University of Dayton) It’s time for another report on Dayton, Ohio, subject of this introduction last month. A century ago, Dayton was known mainly for the things it created, from the Wright Brothers’ […]
Economic & Business Development
The Death and Afterlife of the Mall
Video by The Atlantic The shopping mall has had a dramatic fall from grace. Once the veritable town square and a cornerstone of American consumerism, malls have aged into oblivion, replaced by cheaper and more convenient alternatives. Today, these sprawling complexes are mostly ghost towns—dilapidated vestiges of their former selves. In a new episode of The Idea […]
Economic & Business Development
The Gem City Moves Forward
Read the story in The Atlantic here. Overlooking downtown Dayton this autumn James Fallows / The Atlantic This is the first in a series of posts on the city of Dayton, Ohio. I’ve been there three times since August and am about to make another trip. Almost every trend affecting modern America is on display in […]