Southern Rural
Sociological Association
...an educational and scientific organization established to foster the study, understanding, and application of rural sociology in the South.
Sites of Interest
Culled from The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 2002-2003. http://scout.wisc.edu/ and Southern Compass, Copyright Southern Growth Policies Board 2003. http://www.southern.org/compass
Finding Exurbia: America's Fast-Growing Communiites at the Metropolitan Fringe [pdf] In the early 1990s the journalist and social commentator Joel Garreau coined the term "edge cities" to refer to the growing quasi-urban places that were centered around major suburban freeway interchanges. Some fifteen years later, more and more scholars are interested in teh movement towards exurban areas, which in many cases, are further distant than many edge cities. Recently, a team fo scholars at The Brookings Institution decided to write a rather compelling report on these fast-growing communities, and this work represents their current thoughts and observations. In this 48-page paper published in October 2006, they present a number of interesting findings based on demographic and economic data from 1990 to 2005. Their findings include a number of geographically informed analyses, such as the fact that the South and Midwest are more exurbanized than the West and Northeast and the residents of the "average" exurb are disproportionately white, middle-income commuters. To read the report, click here [pdf].
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International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives The International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) is a broad international association of local governments and related units of governance committed to sustainable development. Their website serves as a clearinghouse for research reports, newsletters, and policy briefs. On their homepage, visitors can read about their latest news, check job postings, and also learn about recent developments from their members. |
Rural Counties Experiencing Higher Employment Growth Than Urban Counties From 2003 to 2005, employment and income grew at a faster rate in rural counties than urban areas, with the recreational, big crops and livestock industries contributing to the upswing. A new article by the Center for the Study of Rural America (CSRA) at the Kansas City Federal Reserve offers three recommendations to sustain this growth. First, rural communities must develop the leadership capacity and regional cooperation to develop an economic development plan that leverages assets across jurisdictions. These regions can then utilize federal research across industry sectors, such as advanced manufacturing, medicine, transportation and agriculture, aligned with their economic development plan. Lastly, regions must build the infrastructure needed to create and support rural entrepreneurs. To view the report A New Rural Economy: A New Role for Public Policy click |
New Education Stats for the South Reflect Growing Populations The National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) projects that roughly half of the Southern Growth states will experience an increase in high school graduates between 2003 and 2016 while the other half will actually see the number of high school graduates decline. Though public school enrollment will increase in all Southern Growth states, only six—Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina and Tennessee will produce a higher number of high school graduates. Much of the public school enrollment increases will come from populations with historically lower education attainment rates—low-income students and people of color, pointing to the need to target these “non traditional” populations. The NCES report, Projections of Education Statistics to 2015, can be found here. |
National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service With significant funding from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Business-Cooperative Service, the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (ATTRA) is committed to providing visitors to their site with the latest information on sustainable agriculture practices, innovation, alternative crop and livestock enterprises, and of course, organic certification. For a succinct introduction, first-time visitors will want to click on the “What is Sustainable Agriculture?” link, which leads to a number of pieces that address just that question, along with overviews of organic crop production, integrated pest management, and permaculture. After that, visitors can browse around in sections dedicated to field crops, horticultural crops, water management, livestock, and farm energy. Visitors can also sign up to receive the “Weekly Harvest” e-newsletter which is a web digest of sustainable agriculture news, resources, and funding opportunities that staff members at ATTRA have located on the internet. |
Cost of Living Alters the Geography of U.S. Poverty Adjusting for cost-of-living changes the face of poverty in the U.S., finds new research from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (ERS). Official federal poverty measures assume that the cost of living is the same throughout the nation, resulting in higher poverty rates in non-metro areas. However, ERS research finds that the geographic distribution of poverty is reversed when the cost of living is taken into account, with metro areas suffering from higher rates of poverty. For more information, click here. |
New Rural Voices Issue Focuses on Rural Housing in Appalachia The summer issue of Rural Voices is devoted to what is happening in 21st century Appalachia, with a focus on rural housing. In addition to articles on non-profit housing networks, the impact of the coal mining industry on community development in the region, and the challenges of keeping housing affordable in areas seeing an influx of wealthier households attracted by the area’s beauty, the issue also includes interviews with Appalachian Regional Commission Co-Chairs Anne Pope and Governor Bob Taft. View the issue here. |
New Online Tool for Community Revitalization Efforts NeighborWorks America, a national nonprofit organization created by Congress to provide financial support, technical assistance, and training for community-based revitalization efforts, has made available on its website a new evaluation tool for community development programs. The tool, known as storymapping, guides practitioners through the evaluation process, including capacity assessment, performance measurement and evaluation. A complementary PowerPoint presentation focuses on useful evaluation data that is available from sources such as the Census Bureau. These materials were originally presented as part of a symposium entitled All in Good Measure that took place in Kansas City, Missouri in June 2006. Visit the NeighborWorks Training Institute website here. |
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http://www.hungerinamerica.org/ With significant assistance from the Mathematica Policy Research firm, America’s Second Harvest recently completed their Hunger in America 2006 report. The study was very ambitious in scope, as all told, they talked to 52,000 individuals and received survey questionnaires from 31,000 local emergency hunger-relief agencies. Users can choose to read the entire report, but they may also wish to just look over the “Key Findings” area, which includes tables and information on such topics as how many clients received emergency food from the national network of food banks and where these food banks obtain their food. The “Snapshot Comparisons” area allows visitors to look at comparisons between income levels, urban areas, and other such variables. While some of the findings may more than a bit discomforting, this important work will be of great use to people working in the areas of human services, social work, and related fields. |
In 2002, the University of Kentucky and the Kentucky Virtual Library project received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to digitize around 1,000 books about Kentucky history and literature. Since that time, the project has been expanded several times, and all of those books, along with a cornucopia of oral histories, photographs, and maps can be found at this site. Given the amount of material here, visitors may want to start by looking over some of the category headings on the homepage, which include images, newspapers, and maps. One real gem that should not be overlooked is the collection of photographs from the Lexington Herald-Leader, which documents life in and around the town all the way back to 1895. Visitors should also not miss taking a look through their extensive oral history collection, which includes interviews with individuals involved with the integration of major league baseball and interviews conducted by Kentucky native and author Robert Penn Warren for his book, "Who Speaks for the Negro?" |
Navigating Resources for Rural Schools |
Civic Health Index Shows Steep Declines in Civic Health for the Last 30 Years A newly released “Civic Health Index” from the National Conference on Citizenship, a non-profit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress, shows steep declines over the past 30 years in most areas of civic health, with a few hopeful signs, such as a rebound in volunteering (especially among youth) and political engagement, in the past decade. Of particular concern is a large and growing civic divide between those with a college education and those without. The report’s findings are based on 40 indicators of civic health organized into nine categories, including connecting to civic and religious groups, giving and volunteering, and participating in politics. The data looks at trends from 1975 to 2004. Download Broken Engagement: America’s Civic Health Index here. |
| Agricultural
Communications Documentation Center at UIUC
Based at the Isaac Funk Family Library at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC), no piece of agricultural journalism is overlooked, as topics covered here range from the world of agricultural knowledge frameworks to analyses of pork, beef and poultry advertising. |
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Alabama Maps
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Alabama Community Profiled in Kettering’s Connections Magazine “We have noticed that communities that have acted effectively to gain greater control over their futures have usually made fundamental changes in their politics,” observes David Mathews, President of the Kettering Foundation, in the most recent issue of the foundation’s Connections magazine. The March 2003 issue is devoted to examples of communities that have engaged citizens to address community problems. One of those highlighted is Uniontown, Alabama, a town of 3,500 that is one of the poorest communities in the state. There, the creation of Uniontown Cares, a diverse group of citizens representing different income levels, ages, and races, has led to action in the community, including the clean-up of parks and cemeteries, the creation of an Alcoholics Anonymous chapter, and an adopt-a-park program. “Those residents who have been engaged through Uniontown Cares are beginning to feel good about themselves and their sense of efficacy is increasing. They are now beginning to see themselves as citizens who can do something to improve the quality of life in Uniontown,” the article concludes. To order a free copy, e-mail ecruffolo@ec-ruffolo.com, call: 1-800-600-4060, or FAX: 1-937-435-7367. |
| Arkansas’ Transition to Knowledge-Driven Economy John Ahlen, President of the Arkansas Science and Technology Authority (ASTA) and long-time Southern Technology Council member, and Arkansas entrepreneur Mark Diggs have authored a new book, The Keys to Growth in the New Economy: Investing in Discovery, Engineering, and Entrepreneurship. Published by Capital Resource Corporation, the book chronicles Arkansas's transition from an agrarian to a manufacturing economy and points the way towards a new knowledge-driven economy for the state. According to the authors, "It is clear that research infrastructure, research activities, and innovations derived from research are central to economic well being." |
Beyond Edge City: Office Sprawl in South Florida [.pdf] Released in March 2003, this paper from the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings Institute deals with the persistent phenomenon of office sprawl throughout much of South Florida. Authored by Robert E. Lang, the 12-page report demonstrates that the majority of office employment in the area is located in "Edgeless Cities," a form of small-scale and scattered development that never reaches any type of critical mass. Lang suggests that this type of development, which has increased significantly since the 1970s, "can exacerbate a region's jobs/ housing mismatch, or widen the distance between economic opportunity and concentrations of minority households." |
Community Voices |
Center for Arts and Culture Founded in 1994, the Center is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization whose mission is to enlarge the public vision of the centrality of the arts and culture in everyday life. To this end, the Center commissions research, holds public roundtables, and publishes new voices and perspectives on the arts and culture. Specifically, the Center focuses on seven areas where policies intersect with cultural issues: Law, Globalization, Access, Preservation, Community, Investment, and Education. |
| Center for Rural Affairs As their mission statement states, the Center for Rural Affairs is "committed to building communities that stand for social justice, economic opportunity, and environmental stewardship." One of the highlights of the Center's site is their monthly newsletter that offers a range of pertinent news stories dealing with national events affecting rural America. For persons in rural areas, the Rural Enterprise Assistance Project section will be most helpful, offering numerous outreach programs, such as a Women's Business Center, information on small business loans, and a newsletter. Also of interest is an area that highlights legislative actions and current bills affecting rural areas (most notably, legislation related to agriculture and farming).
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The Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science The Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science's primary mission is "to develop unrestricted access to tools and perspectives that will advance the spatial analytic capabilities of researchers throughout the social sciences." With that in mind, visitors will want to examine the Core Programs section of the site, which features a best practices in spatial approaches section, a collection of educational resources (such as papers, listings of classic research endeavors in spatially-oriented social sciences, and additional links), and information about relevant national and regional conferences dealing with these approaches. Most helpful for researchers will be the customized searches for spatial resources (with reviews of each individual site) that can be performed through the Center's search engines. |
| North Carolina Consortium Releases First Statewide Index of Civic Engagement A new study released by the North Carolina Civic Education Consortium provides the first analysis of youth and adult civic engagement on a statewide level. The report, “Measures of Citizenship: the North Carolina Civic Index 2003,” examines citizenship skills, knowledge, attitudes, behaviors and opportunities among state residents. The Civic Index is based on the results of a comprehensive telephone survey of nearly 1,600 North Carolinians—youth, ages 13 to 17, and adults. The statewide survey asked questions about citizenship skills, knowledge, attitudes, behaviors and opportunities. The report also draws from existing data on civic behavior in the state, including voter turnout rates, charitable giving, and diversity in public office, to provide a snapshot of North Carolina's civic vitality in 2003. The complete report, including recommendations for improving youth civic engagement, can be found at http://www.civics.unc.edu/civicindex/index.htm. For more information on the North Carolina Civic Education Consortium or Civic Index, please contact Debra Henzey at (919) 962-8273. |
Demography and the Social Contract |
| Civic Infrastructure Influences Financing of Community Development A new discussion paper from the Brookings Institution explores how the strength and structure of an area’s community development organizations can influence financing for projects in urban neighborhoods. Cleveland, Indianapolis and St. Louis are used as examples of cities with differing institutional structures: Cleveland with a broad range of strong community development organizations; Indianapolis with a reliance on a more limited set of institutions and St. Louis with a weaker community development infrastructure. The author concludes that nonprofit organizations play an important role in increasing the private sector’s comfort level with investment in low-income areas. Therefore, communities with a more diverse set of community development organizations seem to have more private sector participation. See “Civic Infrastructure and the Financing of Community Development.” |
Poverty, Race and Community in Rural Places: The Empowerment Approach In this 12-page report, J. Norman Reid, the Associate Deputy Administrator for the Rural Development branch of the USDA, outlines a basic outline for assisting poor rural communities in the United States through empowerment. As Mr. Reid suggests in his paper when reviewing previous policies in this program area, "these programs did little or nothing to address the causes of poverty or provide incentives or means for individuals to escape it." Mr. Reid continues by listing several key elements for operating an effective empowerment program, including community-wide participation and building community capacity. Overall, the report will be compelling to those in the field of community development and rural policy-making in the United States. |
| Employment Statistics & Labor Market Information Employment statistics come form many sources, each with different strengths and weaknesses. The Minnesota Workforce Center has a useful table summarizing the differences. The Center also has a glossary of terms useful for users of labor market information. |
EPA’s Environmental Justice Revitalization Project Anniston, AL, Princeville, NC, and Rock Hill, SC, are among 15 communities nationwide that have been selected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to participate in a demonstration project aimed at identifying collaborative models to achieve environmental justice and promote community revitalization. Anniston’s project focuses on child health and development, Princeville’s on developing a town-wide revitalization plan, and Rock Hill’s on the redevelopment of an area hit hard by the loss of the textile industry. Key to all projects is bringing together diverse stakeholders who may not have been “at the table” together in the past. The overarching goal is to improve the quality of life for minority, low-income populations. |
| The Fiscal Survey of States [.pdf] Released on November 25, 2002, this latest 68-page report from the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers demonstrates that many of the 50 states face dire financial problems that are among the worst in 50 years. Some highlights from the report include information revealing that 26 states used across-the-board cuts in their budgets and "rainy-day" funds in 2002, along with the equally ominous information that 16 states experienced negative growth in the past fiscal year. The full report contains detailed charts and tables documenting, with great specificity, the nature of the budget cuts within each state, along with listing the types of programs that were curtailed or eliminated entirely. Perhaps most telling is the report's finding that state balances for the 2003 fiscal year have dropped 70 percent since they peaked in the 2000 fiscal year. |
Gateway to Government Food Safety Information Given all the recent concern about different foodborne pathogens in the news and on television, this site will help answer a variety of questions that consumers and persons in the food industry may have about any number of related topics. |
| Rural Housing Conditions
Housing conditions for minorities living in rural areas are often worse than those of any other population in the U.S., says a new report from the Housing Assistance Council. The study points out that while homeownership rates are often high in rural areas with significant concentrations of minorities, housing values are considerably lower for minorities than for whites in these areas. In addition, loans often cost more than in less isolated areas, creating a severe cost burden for many minority families. Race, Place, and Housing: Housing Conditions in Rural Minority Counties is available for download in .pdf format. |
Eugene Havens Center for the Study of Social Structure and Social Change Named in honor of the late professor of rural sociology Eugene Havens, the Center is dedicated to promoting critical social thought throughout the social sciences and humanities. At the site, visitors can learn about the annual Radfest gathering (which is a social forum for activists, policymakers, and academics in the Midwest), the Real Utopias project, and register for some of the center's upcoming conferences. The real treat of the site is the audio archive, which contains talks by various visiting scholars on a host of relevant topics, such as labor unions, social justice movements around the world, and critical race theory. |
| The Impact of Collaborative Planning on Governance Capacity [pdf] In this 27-page working paper from the Institute of Urban and Regional Development at Berkeley, Judith E. Innes and David E. Booher look at the ability of institutions to effectively build capacity, how this capacity can be utilized to create meaningful change within governance, and how this capacity might also aid in collaborative planning schemes. As they note in their introduction, "This paper is concerned with governance and how some new forms of collaborative dialogue, policy making, and action are filling the gaps left as our formal institutions of government are failing to carry out their responsibilities or where no agency has jurisdiction." The paper goes on to describe how several different theories may be applied in order to rectify these situations in which complex governance and policy decisions seem to remain inadequately addressed. |
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy -- The Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP) serves as the research arm of the social sciences at Columbia University and offers a host of online resources. From the homepage, visitors can look through some of the group's latest offerings, which include brief articles, working papers, and details about upcoming books. For the most up-to-date material, users will want to peruse the Institute's quarterly newsletter, which contains information on the events it sponsors, along with full-text articles based on its research. Academics will want to also read about the Institute's funding and post-doctoral research opportunities. |
| Mappr! -- With all of the sophisticated mapping and GIS applications commonly available today, it would make sense that someone would develop a site where visitors could upload their photographs onto an interactive map. Mappr is such a website, and it serves as "an interactive environment for exploring place, based on the photos people take." Mappr takes the photos uploaded to the Flickr photograph management-and-storage system, and maps them on to a map of the United States based on their location of origin. Visitors to the site will want to read about the methodology behind the system, and then peruse some of the recent images that have been placed on the site. Using a image scale bar, visitors can enlarge the size of the images, or just click on the ones that strike their fancy. In many cases, the photographs are "tagged" with additional information that assist Mappr with assigning a geographic location to each image. | Kids Count Pocket Guides Provide State Level Info on Latino and African American Kids Two new “pocket guides” provide state-by-state measures of child well being for Latino and African-American children. The guides provide data on a number of factors affecting the well being of children, including income and poverty, employment, education and neighborhood characteristics. The publications, both from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, are part of the organization’s KIDS COUNT initiative. You can access the Latino guide and the African-American guide |
| The Mead Project: Foundational Documents in Sociological Social Psychology Compiled and created by Lloyd Gordon Ward and Robert Throop at the Brock University Department of Sociology in Canada, the Mead Project contains an array of primary documents by George Herbert Mead and his contemporaries. The stated goal of the project is to revitalize research on Mead's work and to facilitate access to his publications by bringing together many key documents in one readily accessible location. Along with a collection of seminal papers and articles written by Mead from 1881 to 1938, the site also contains a variety of supplementary scholarship produced by William James and John Dewey. Almost all of the documents are publicly available, but several will require users to register with the Project, which is free. |
Migration and Geographic Mobility in Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan America: 1995 to 2000 [pdf] -- This special 8-page report from the US Census takes a look at migration and geographic mobility across the metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas of the United States. The report offers some interesting observations, such as the fact that residents of central cities within metropolitan areas were more mobile during this time period than those residing in nonmetropolitan territory. |
| National Archives and Record Administration: Access to Archival Databases The National Archives has recently created this valuable online database that contains close to 50 million historical records, culled from 350 archival sources from 20 different federal agencies. Some sources include the Japanese-American Internee File, the Community Action Program Grant Master Files, and the Civil War Sites Database. From the homepage, visitors can learn about the architecture of the database, read about the terminology used on the site (and in the archives more generally), and how to get help using the archives. To begin, users will want to select a file unit, which are divided by subject, geography, organization, time span, and creator (such as civilian or military agency). After making this selection, a list of relevant file units will be returned, and users can select the one that is most germane to their area of interest. At this point, users can perform a more detailed search within the particular database they have selected. When users have found the information they are looking for, they have the option to view the records, print them out, or copy them to their own computer. |
National Center for Education Statistics State Level Data on Schools, Students, Staff & Districts A report, “Overview of Public Elementary and Secondary Schools and Districts: School Year 2001-02,” by the National Center for Education Statistics provides national and state-level information about schools, students, staff and districts. |
| National Environmental Data Index The National Environmental Data Index is maintained by the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration Environmental Information Service. The service provides a full text search of information from twelve governmental agencies including the US Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Interior, Environmental Protection Agency, and NASA. Users can choose to search from all or individual agencies, type of information, and by several specific subjects. Results display the agency and initial hits found within each, you can then display all results including links to the specific information. The breadth of data is helpful for one-stop shoppers, but it does create long waiting times for results, so specific search criteria is recommended. |
National Park Service Data Information The National Park Service Data and Information Web site contains several helpful links for data related to the Parks. The Data Clearinghouse link has national and regional data sets such as civil war and land status data, local and regional historic and scenic trails data sets, and information on the Virgin Islands in a well designed and easily browseable format. The Interactive Map Center allows visitors to explore the National Parks using interactive interfaces, while other links explain the National Park Service's standards and specifications, and how to use metadata correctly with other data. The unique and limited scope of the data makes the site a good example of how the Web is increasingly becoming an excellent source for hard-to-find free information. |
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NOAA Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management In light of a number of recent events, there is increased concern about the management of America’s coastal and ocean resources. It is a pressing issue for economic reasons, along with the simple fact that over fifty percent of the U.S. population lives close to the coastlines of two oceans and the Great Lakes. Persons interested in these matters will appreciate the NOAA Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management site, which features newsletters, information about their strategic plans, and copious amounts of material on their initiatives, which include dock management and community development partnerships. A basic overview of the issues facing coastal regions can be found in the “Coastal Issues” section of the site which contains brief summaries on marine debris, coastal hazards, water quality, and aquaculture. The site is rounded out by a “My state” section. Here, visitors can utilize a clickable map of the U.S. to learn about coastal management activities underway in their state. |
SustainLane
Government
Based in San Francisco, SustainLane Government was started in 2004. Their primary goal is to provide an online database of best practices in sustainability and environmental management. Currently, the database includes over 100 best practice documents which include coverage of land use activities, waste management practices, and green building and development. Visitors can browse through these documents at their leisure and they will also want to look at SustainLane’s “City Sustainable Rankings”, which are available on the homepage. Another nice feature of the site’s homepage is the “Recent Uploads” area, which includes recently uploaded documents that deal with local action plans for climate change, plastic bag reduction ordinance, and so on. Finally, visitors should also look over the “Articles” section, as it contains pieces such as “Top Ten Alternative Fueled City Fleets” and “Top US Cities for Cleantech Incubation Clusters”. |
| National Surveys of Latinos [.pdf] The surveys conducted under this ongoing partnership are designed to gain a deeper understanding of the Hispanic population in the United States. The Pew Hispanic Center is a non-partisan research center supported by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts of Philadelphia. The Center is a project of the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication. Representatives from Pew and Kaiser work together to develop survey questionnaires and analyze results. The two organizations release joint survey reports, however each organization bears sole responsibility for any additional work that appears under its name. |
Office of University Partnerships The Office of University Partnerships, founded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1994, is designed "to encourage and expand the efforts of higher education that are striving to make a difference in their communities through funding opportunities." Their online presence includes a number of helpful documents for persons interested in these relationships, including a recently updated guide to foundations likely to fund research related to topics dealing with colleges and communities. Also helpful is a database of research and publications conducted by OUP and its grantees, along with archived OUP newsletters. Rounding out the site is a section devoted to upcoming events sponsored by the OUP and participating institutions, in addition to documents for persons interested in applying for funding. |
| Neighborhood Funders Group
The Neighborhood Funders Group (NFG) is a "national network of foundations and philanthropic organizations." The NFG supports community-based efforts that improve economic and social conditions in low-income communities. The news and resources section of the site contains information about professional opportunities, recommended reading lists (along with links to selected online readings), and links to related sites on the Web such as the National Low-Income Housing Coalition. Visitors may also want to look at the organization's newsletter (which is archived back to 1998), and check out its publications, which include papers dealing with the affordable rental housing market and community organizing. |
Planetizen: The Planning and Development Network With the increased interest in planning, PLANetizen was created three years ago as "a public-interest information exchange for the urban planning and development community." The site features a host of frequently updated links to recent news stories that address one of the facets of planning (such as gentrification), job opportunities, commentary, and conference announcements. Guests to the site may also elect to sign up for their electronic newsletter, and may even choose to have it delivered to any number of handheld devices, including Windows CE or Palm. The site also includes a list of the 20 "all-time greatest planning titles," which includes such familiar selections as "Good City Form" by Kevin Lynch and "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson. |
| Persistent Poverty in the South It’s a Matter of Wealth: Dismantling Persistent Poverty in the Southeastern United States, reports on persistent poverty in the South, including an overview of demographic and social characteristics of the region, an economic analysis, and recommendations for a federal initiative modeled after the Appalachian Regional Commission. The study, which was commissioned by Senator Zell Miller and conducted by the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia, included a series of discussion meetings held throughout the region.
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Reinventing the Wheel: The 2003 Report on the Future of the South Released June 1, 2003, at the Southern Leadership Summit, Reinventing the Wheel presents a new model of leadership to strengthen the South’s capacity to respond to emerging challenges and opportunities - from globalization and new economic forces to large-scale demographic changes. The report’s foundation is the emerging research and awareness that civic infrastructure directly impacts both quality of life and economic opportunity. Regional focus groups and surveys yielded recommendations from citizens that call for more, diverse and better-prepared leaders in the South. The report includes research on social capital and civic engagement and practical examples of citizens that are addressing community challenges with inclusive, connected and collaborative strategies. Potential actions for communities are also presented in the report for strengthening leadership in the region by engaging youth and immigrants and for recruiting more diverse citizens to assume leadership roles. |
| Reclaiming the Everglades: South Florida's Natural History, 1884-1934 Reclaiming the Everglades, a 1997-98 Library of Congress (LC)/Ameritech award winner, is now online in LC's American Memory. University of Miami, Florida International University and the Historical Museum of Southern Florida contributed a wide range of materials selected from 16 collections for the digitizing project. These collections include the University of Miami's Marjory Stoneman papers, documenting Stoneman's career as a journalist, environmental activist, and founder of Everglades National Park; Historical Museum of Southern Florida's ephemera collection; and five complete publications from Florida International University, including the 1913 children's book, Boy Scouts in the Everglades, and engineering reports. Users can search by keyword, or browse name, title or subject indexes. There are also browseable lists of Everglades Timelines and Everglades Biographies. |
Rural Assistance Center
The Rural Assistance Center (RAC) is a national resource on rural health and human services information. The information specialists of the RAC are available to provide assistance, such as web and database searches on rural topics and funding resources, linking users to organizations, and furnishing relevant publications from the RAC resource library. |
| Retirees
Providing States and Cities Economic Growth “Shorn of the old-line industries that once gave them prominence, increasing numbers of cities and states are turning to retirees for economic growth,” reports an article in The Christian Science Monitor. The article cites a study from the American Association of Retirement Communities that finds that one relocating retiree can have as much economic impact on a community as three to four factory workers—primarily because these types of retirees are often wealthier than working people. The article notes that Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi are among a growing number of states that have created programs to attract seniors. See “Retirees breathe new life into fading towns.” |
New
Report Offers Technology Solutions to Improve Rural Health Care
A new report from the Institute of Medicine promotes a five-pronged strategy to improving health care in rural areas. Recommendations from Quality through Collaboration: The Future of Rural Health include investing in a health information and communications technology infrastructure, adopting an integrated approach, and enhancing the human resource capacity of health care professionals. The report can be purchased at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11140.html. |
Rural Policy Research Institute
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Smart Growth Speaker Series Now Available Via Free Audio Files You can now listen to distinguished speakers on smart growth issues while sitting at your desk. The Smart Growth Network has created audio files of its monthly Smart Growth Speaker Series. Past speakers have focused on such varied topics as the fiscal advantages of smart growth, the role of aging in community planning, and small town growth issues. Access the audio files at http://www.smartgrowth.org/audio/default.asp For those in the Washington, D.C. area, the series, which is free to the public, is held at the National Building Museum, 401 F Street N.W, Washington D.C. (Judiciary Square Metro). To get regular announcements about the Smart Growth Speaker Series, please e-mail your name, organization, address, phone, fax, and e-mail address to the U.S. EPA's Development, Community, and Environment Division (DCED) c/o Deloris Wingo-Huntley, at wingo-huntley.deloris@epa.gov. |
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Society of Environmental Journalists Global warming, climate change, and other related topics are all covered by environmental journalists. For those who seek to learn more about the profession (or for those who might already be involved in this world), the Society of Environmental Journalists website will be a most welcome discovery. The objective of the Society is “to build a stronger and more closely connected network of educated environmental journalists and editors”, and their site is a testimony to that spirit. Here, visitors can sign up to receive the “EJToday” news updates, read their biweekly tip sheet, and also learn about their mentoring program. The “Resources” section is very much worth a visit, and it includes links to online resources dealing with hurricanes, teaching environmental journalism, relevant blogs, and a work in progress guide “Climate Change: A Guide to the Information and Disinformation”.
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| Smart Growth Online | SocioSite
With the broad range of research interests covered within the field of sociology around the world, it is a formidable task to attempt to offer a clearinghouse of information about the various aspects of this area of scholarship. The site is divided into 18 subject areas, including those devoted to courses, journals, data archives, research centers, associations, newsletters, publishers, and subject areas. The Sociologists section is quite helpful for those looking to peruse valuable online materials related to important persons who have worked in sociology (and other related disciplines), such as Claude Levi-Strauss, Robert Merton, Erving Goffman, and dozens of others. Almost every section is arranged geographically, facilitating searches for journals found in almost any part of the world, or for sociology departments on different continents. |
| Southeast Water Policy Initiative Examines problems in the quantity and quality of water in the Southeastern United States. Works to establish a coherent, long-term, collaborative approach to solving water problems. |
Southern Growth Policies Board
Southern Growth Policies Board is a non-partisan public policy think tank formed by the region’s governors in 1971. Southern Growth provides its members, and the region, with authoritative research, discussion forums and pilot projects that define the critical issues shaping the South and develops new regional strategies for economic development and identifies best practices to facilitate action. Southern Growth’s research focus encompasses the major drivers for economic development in the South -globalization, technology and innovation, the changing nature of the workforce and the vital role of the community. |
| Sprawl City Sprawl City is a site dedicated to informing and assisting the general public about the issues of sprawl and rural land lost in the United States. With oversight from a variety of academic and practicing planners, the site contains a host of information about the growing rate of sprawl among urbanized and urbanizing areas across the country. Most helpful are a series of studies by Kolankiewicz and Beck investigating sprawl in several different states and regions, including California, Florida, Minnesota, and the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Along with all of their reports and studies, a section of definitions offers a more concrete explanation of how "sprawl" and other terms are technically defined. |
Southern Institute on Children and Families
The Southern Institute on Children and Families is an independent non-profit organization that improves the well-being of children and families through knowledge, leadership and action. Since our establishment in 1990, their mission has been to improve opportunities for children and families in the South and also have provided direction and leadership on national programs consistent with our mission. |
| Through the Lens of Time: Images of African Americans from the Cook Collection of Photographs Father and son George and Huestis Cook were photographers active in the US South, particularly Virginia, from the 1860s to the 1930s. These work resulted in the George and Huestis Cook Photograph Collection at the Valentine Richmond History Center, which contains over 10,000 negatives. Huestis Cook's photographs are unique in showing African-Americans realistically, instead of in popular stereotypical settings. Huestis also documented the tobacco business and Virginia plantations. The Web interface provides both keyword searching and browsing by 19 different subject headings, such as children, portraits, or tobacco. |
Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia This fascinating online exhibit examines the folkways and culture of the people in southern West Virginia. As the project sought to examine the relationship between the people and their rugged physical surroundings, it is appropriate that the exhibit offers a host of materials that orient the visitor to this part of the country, including several well designed maps. The site itself contains 679 audio recordings and 1256 photographs, all of which can be searched by subject, geographic location, and title. The audio clips feature natives of the region talking about everyday experiences such as hunting, gardening, coal mining, and timbering. Additionally, there are several special collections organized around certain themes, including "Seasonal Round of Activities on Coal River" and "Seining for Hellgrammites on Coal River." |
| Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture Interested parties can learn about Tennessee's history and culture at this fine site which is the digital version of The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. Here visitors can browse through more than 1500 entries, along with 500 additional images and some audio and video files as well. For those interested in looking at the material by themes, they will be pleased to learn that the materials are also divided into categories, such as medicine, sports, county history, and industry. |
Virtual
Landscapes of Texas
The library of the University of Texas at Austin have put together this online archive of public domain documents that deal with various landscapes throughout the state. Visitors can use the online search engine, or they can peruse them via an alphabetical listing, to peruse the documents here, including geological study reports from the late 19th century, drought surveys, and extended treatises on the effectiveness of various road-building materials. |
| The Doris Ulmann Photograph Collection -- Doris Ulmann was a graduate of the school of the Ethical Culture Society, a socially liberal organization that was know for championing individual worth regardless of ethnic background or economic condition. Over her life, Ulmann documented the rural people of the American South and also created a series of prominent intellectuals of the day, including John Dewey and Lewis Mumford. Recently, the University of Oregon Libraries created this fine digital collection that provides access to 1,800 of approximately 12,000 images from the Ulman Photograph Collection. Visitors to the site can browse the collection or perform advanced searches utilizing such fields as title, description, and photo date. | University of Kentucky Poverty Research Center |
| Urban Planning, 1794-1918 Compiled by John W. Reps, Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at Cornell University, this selection of 185 primary documents dealing with urban planning will be extremely useful to persons concerned with the subject or urban history in general. The selections on the site are searchable by author, date, subject, or key words. Documents on the site include Frederick Law Olmstead's commentary on the City Beautiful movement and continue all the way to his son's discussion of housing developments in 1919. Professor Reps has also included a supplementary bibliography for additional consideration and a general introduction to the material presented in this anthology. |
USDA Agriculture Fact Book: 2001-2002 [.pdf] The 169-page USDA Agriculture Fact Book offers a view of the broader trends in American agriculture, as well as the extent and nature of the outreach programs provided by the USDA and its related agencies. The topics are divided into more digestible smaller sections, including the food consumption of Americans, the transformation of American farms, and American food safety. All told, there are a total of twelve sections, many of which include helpful visual aids, such as tables, charts, and graphs. The chapter dedicated to rural development efforts will be of great interest to policy and planning professionals, as it details the extent to which the USDA is able to affect change and create growth within many of America's rural areas, some of which continue to experience severe population losses. |
| USDA Rural Information Center The Rural Information Center (RIC) provides information and referral services to local, state, and federal government officials; community organizations; rural electric and telephone cooperatives; libraries; businesses; and, rural citizens working to maintain the vitality of America's rural areas. |
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Rural Assistance Center The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has funded the establishment of an on-line resource center aimed at providing policymakers, researchers, and citizens with information on community development, child care, faith-based initiatives, and other health and human services issues in rural communities. Information specialists are also available to provide customized assistance, such as web and database searches on rural topics and funding resources, linking users to organizations, and furnishing copies of relevant publications from a resource library. |
| The 3rd World Water Forum [Media Player] Convened in March 2003, the 3rd World Water Forum dealt with 38 interlocked themes concerning how to bring safe water and sanitation to the world. Considered the most important international water meeting to date, the forum hosted close to 24,000 persons from 182 countries. On this site, users can read various documents presented at the Forum, along with reading the daily newspaper produced at the meeting and its newsletter. The finest feature of the site is the streaming video archive of select meetings and plenary sessions. Here, visitors can listen and watch the participants discuss a number of timely topics, such as dams and development, water and transport, and floods. Equally valuable is the ability to browse through the different sessions, and, in some cases, users can download background documents and entire papers. |
The 80-55 Coalition The 80-55 Coalition is a growing nonpartisan group of advocacy, policy and research organizations dedicated to strengthening rural America. Together, we work toward educating policy makers and key decision makers on rural issues to ensure economic prosperity, increased cultural and social contributions, and the preservation of open spaces that intrinsically define “rural.” |
Content is © Southern Rural Sociology 2006