BUILD REGIONAL SOLUTIONS

CIVIC LIFE

A Town of Doers Works Together to Preserve Their Past and Plan Their Future

Citizens and businesses in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania have adopted a mantra: if it’s a community problem, it’s their problem too.

RURAL & REGIONAL

Inside Our Towns: Jason Neises

Discussing opportunities, real and perceived challenges in small-town America, and the impact of Community Heart & Soul in Iowa.

LIBRARIES

A Remarkable Woman Builds a Remarkable Library

This is the story of how a late-1800s free public library built by Amelia S. Givin in Mt. Holly Springs, Pennsylvania continues to bring the region together today.

BIG LITTLE IDEAS

A California Project, with Nationwide Ambitions

American history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. Crises keep cropping up--and so do ideas and solutions. Many innovations from the 1930s have new relevance for the post-pandemic 2020s. Here is an example, and the thinking behind it.

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

New Lessons of the New Deal

I was talking with the mayor of a "red state" city about how his community was weathering today's public-health and financial crises.

Economic & Business Development

‘Lessons From Danville’

By the Dan River, in the River District of Danville, Virginia, this summer James Fallows / The Atlantic This summer, Deb Fallows and I visited the southern-Virginia town of Danville, and the surrounding rural areas of Pittsylvania County, Virginia, and the adjoining Caswell County, North Carolina. In its heyday, Danville was a thriving textile and tobacco […]

Economic & Business Development

A Regional Approach to Rural Healthcare Challenges

God's Storehouse, a food pantry serving low-income people along this southernmost border where Virginia meets North Carolina.

Arts

A Community Finding a Path Forward

The civic-renewal mix in Angola, Indiana