Perilous Quest Revive Iowa Nice: Renovate Rural Communities - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

...No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come
will not be remembered by those who follow them... Ecclesiastes 1:11

ADVISORY… Demographic data and narration in this book has the risk of creating images and emotional reactions to increase your risk of denial and create a hopeless feeling. That is not the intention for our quest. This quest “tells it like I see it.” I will use a word which I have seldom spoken nor written – a challenging word, not easily connected with Iowa Nice: TRIAGE!

Our quest will encounter words and numbers that tell a harsh story; a story that does not completely ignore the risk of misleading analysis based on financial trends (dollars.) Our quest will examine population trends, road miles, bridges, student enrollments, floorspace, home ownership, business failure rates and increasing age of rural populations - as we seek to understand long term social and economic trends that foreshadow the future for small rural communities. This quest will focus on information to help you identify one of three “triage categories for rural communities that create quality of life for yourself, friends, and family:

SUSTAINABLE: These communities have sufficient resources and long-term evidence of geographic and/or demographic factors to assure a sustainable future - without need for immediate public actions to assure long-term survival. These communities can recover from a single, random environmental or terrorist event, with limited need for extensive long-term intervention. These communities have census records showing stable population (+/- 10%) during the prior 50 years. They have 80% probability to sustain their current population - for at least ten years - inspiring local youth to become entrepreneurs and make investments to assure safe, healthy, and secure places to live, work, and play.

ENDANGERED: These communities face near term risk of terminal condition - they have obvious signs of stress and decline - resulting from gradual population loss from their peak population reached at least fifty years prior. If population losses continue - communities with limited natural resources and/or limited financial assets within the community, or lack of well-paid jobs within a fifty-mile radius from a metropolitan population of at least 50,000 - will not be able retain sufficient population to maintain public services for safe and dependable drinking water, sanitation, streets, fire, EMT, and payroll and equipment for public employees. These communities have an urgent need to focus limited resources that will retain and create well-paid jobs, especially for youth; and assure affordable housing, health care and retain convenient access to daily necessities, especially for the elderly.

TERMINAL: These are the oldest communities, founded in the 1800s, some are isolated, off-of-the-beaten-path, with limited financial resources to create and sustain jobs; populations that have never exceeded 1000 during the prior thirty years. These communities do not have access to financial assets nor sufficient creative energy to accomplish a turnaround phase - that will create and sustain quality of life and create consistent population growth for at least ten years. These communities are unable to meet guidelines required to qualify for charitable grants or justify significant investment of tax-supported public funds.

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