Posts Tagged ‘rural development’

design:SD Rides the U

April 2nd, 2009

In the few short days since coming home from the design:South Dakota team‘s charrette in Deuel County, I’ve been contemplating the process and experience. It’s always an exhausting and energizing trip at the same time. I’ve co-lead three d:SD charrettes now, and I’ve always tried to design our time in the community around the U Process.

This year, I think it worked as well as ever, and other team members commented on the magic of sticking with the process. One comment that I particularly loved: “It seemed like we sat there with all this chaos going around and we weren’t getting anything done for so long. We sat there and struggled. Then, all of a sudden, it was like everything came together and we got a bunch of boards done in no time becuase we really knew what we needed to make.”

It’s worth the headache and hassle of sitting in that mess for a while, patiently opening up for the solutions to emerge. And when they do, it’s go time. Beautiful.

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Posted in Community Development, Rural, Training and Events | Comments (0)

Regionalization Yes, Regional Collaboration, Not So Much

October 15th, 2008

The topic of regional development has received a lot of attention over the years by all kinds of rural development folks.  What has really happen?  When we look under the hood, we see very strong regionalization of numerous services including education, healthcare, telecommunications infrastructure development, and public safety among others.  In many, if not most cases, this regionalization trend reflects aggregating activity across greater distances.  However, quite often this aggregation reflects doing things the same way, but with large numbers, greater mass.

School consolidation is a classic example.  We roll school districts together supposedly, and I mean supposedly, to achieve greater efficiency.  I have yet to see a serious research project that documents greater efficiency and more importantly improved academic performance.  However, we continue to deliver educational services in the same old manner – focusing on facilities and location rather than striving for innovative delivery and programmatic strategies that can leverage an increasingly robust rural telecommunications infrastructure.

As a “recovering academic,” former college professor and president, I have been working on regional development at the community and regional level for over 30 years.  In a future post, I will offer my perspective on why we have not been able to move from regionalization to true regional collaboration.  I am anxious to hear your perspective on this topic.

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Posted in Community Development, Rural | Comments (0)