Competition among neighboring rural communities, whether based on past actions, a zero-sum mentality, high school sports team rivalries, or other factors, rarely make sense when it comes to improving economic prospects for more people. No one rural community can typically meet all of its needs and achieve prosperity or advance equity on its own.
Intentionally and consistently analyzing, planning, and working together across the regional footprint that shares a challenge or opportunity breaks down barriers, builds trust, and ultimately maximizes the use and strengthening of assets that exist in each community as well as the region. This ensures that both investments and returns can happen at a scale that increases dynamism and meets the equitable prosperity aspirations of the region.
Building Block Evidence
Evidence suggests that regional collaboration across geographies, jurisdictions, and functions can be effective in improving social and economic opportunity.1,2 Some researchers have seen regional collaboration as a response to urban-rural divide narratives3,4 and as an institutional response to the realities of rural-urban interdependence.5,6 Principles for effective regional collaboration include: building and sustaining trusted regionally-focused institutions with deep roots, contextual understanding, and strong analytical capacity; recognizing that everyone, urban and rural alike, contributes to regional well-being; addressing inequities of geography, race and ethnicity, gender, income, and class to improve social and economic opportunity and health for all people and places; connecting the many elements that create and sustain healthy economies and communities into regional ecosystems; and investing for the long-term.7
See also, 10: Regional Analysis and Action for an overview of regional studies.
Curated ReSources
From Competition to Cooperation: Insights on Rural Wealth Creation
Insights from rural practitioners who are advancing equitable prosperity and economic development in a way that embraces and strengthens the unique assets of rural regions.
Learning to Grow Equitable Outdoor Recreation Economies
Discussion with rural leaders on the opportunity equitable outdoor recreation economies pose to rural areas.
Pathways to Health Equity: Rural Wellbeing and Regional Assets
How the health equity and economic development fields intersect and can collaborate to bring prosperity to rural communities.
Mapping a New Terrain: Call to Action
As new rural outdoor recreation economies take root, we can meet this moment by improving how we do outdoor recreation development to better support rural families, businesses, and workers, create more sustainable and equitable economic systems, and improve local health and wellbeing.
Translating Federal Opportunities into Local Resources: Ada Jobs Foundation
This short case study has insights and tips on how rural communities with limited staffing and resources can understand, prepare for, and compete for finite federal funds.
Through Natural Disaster to Prosperity: A Call to Action — Executive Summary
Executive Summary document for Through Natural Disaster to Prosperity: A Call to Action. Get quick takeaways and recommendations for action.
Better Results: What does it take to build capacity in rural and Native nations communities?
Organizational capacity and technical assistance need to be carefully and intentionally strengthened in rural and Native nation communities to grow…
Rural Outdoor Recreation Economies: Challenges and Opportunities
Outdoor recreation is driving new opportunities for local communities in many rural places. See ways to do economic development differently with rural recreation economies.
The Calm Before the Storm: Disaster Planning and Rural Resilience
Flooding, tornadoes, drought, wildfire, and other extreme weather events cause major disruption and damage wherever they occur and have potential…
Rural Development Hubs Report
This report focuses on the role — and aggregates the wisdom — of a specific set of intermediaries that are doing development differently in rural America. We focus on Rural Development Hubs because they are main players advancing an asset-based, wealth-building, approach to rural community and economic development.
Field Items
Accelerating Rural Prosperity Through Regional Collaboration
Findings from the chapter on collaborative development, authored by Brian Dabson and Christiana K. McFarland, in the book “Investing in Rural Prosperity”.
Regional Solutions for Rural and Urban Challenges
LOCUS Impact Investing’s Regional Solutions for Rural and Urban Challenges explores the possibility that regional collaboration and solution-seeking can be an effective way of improving social and economic opportunity and health for all people and places within a region.
Regional Rural Development Centers
The NIFA Regional Rural Development Centers (RRDCs) play a unique role in USDA’s service to rural America. They link the research and educational outreach capacity of the nation’s public universities with communities, local decision-makers, entrepreneurs, families, and farmers and ranchers to help address a wide range of development issues.
N.C.’s Border Belt Independent Provides a New Approach to Rural Journalism
Read this Daily Yonder article about a nonprofit newsroom in southeast North Carolina helping change the journalism landscape in four rural counties.
Decreasing flood risk in the Midwest with regional collaborations
A regional approach to flood risk can help communities pool resources and implement effective solutions. Five case studies offer lessons.
Regional Multistate Collaboration Toolkit
The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) and American Institutes for Research (AIR) share case studies, insights and takeaways from practitioners and resources.
Regional Food Hub Resource Guide
This USDA resource guide is designed to give readers a greater understanding of what regional food hubs are, their impacts, strategies to assist their success and growth, and direction on where to find financial resources to support them.
One Appalachia: Connection and Collaboration
YouTube recording of the The Appalachian Regional Commission event One Appalachia: Connection and Collaboration.
Rural Development Policy
One-pager highlighting general policy approach of economic development and recent policy changes.
We see the framework as a living document, which necessarily must evolve over time, and we seek to expand the collective ownership of the Thrive Rural Framework among rural equity, opportunity, health, and prosperity ecosystem actors. Please share your insights with us about things the framework is missing or ways it should change.