Adaptive Reuse

Adaptive reuse refers to the process of reusing an existing building for a purpose other than which it was originally built or designed for. It is also known as recycling and conversion. Adaptive reuse is an effective strategy for optimizing the operational and commercial performance of built assets.

Administrative

Posts with no real category. Some are general site marketing posts like, “Ways to Follow Rural Resurrection”. Others like “Minnesota Towns” provide background information for future articles”

Destination Towns

Destination Towns is a relatively new series on Rural Resurrection. These towns are unique and boldly different, towns that stick out in a crowd and draw people in rather than letting them fly through.

Downtown Revitalization

Ideas and proven examples about renovating downtowns. Includes posts about economic development, grants, activating, fundraising and success stories.

Events / Conferences

Annual observances, conferences, and other activities that can have an impact on our communities, directly or indirectly.

Ghost Towns

There’s an old saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It is important to learn from these ghost towns to help us avoid our communities becoming one as well. However, some of the stories in this category are just interesting tales to read.

Helping Hand

Programs and volunteer activities that can help your community. This category isn’t about grants, it is more about assistance to energize a populace into action.

Housing

Articles about all aspects of rural housing. Topics include; affordable housing, fair housing, workforce housing, repair and maintenance as well.

Marketing

Community marketing is a strategy to engage an audience in an active, non-intrusive prospect and customer conversation. Whereas marketing communication strategies such as advertising, promotion, PR, and sales all focus on attaining customers, Community Marketing focuses on the perceived needs of existing customers.

Planning the Future

“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men`s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever- growing insistency.” – Daniel Burnham. This category dives into the need to plan for your community’s future.

Regulatory

What regulatory actions can you take to help your community out? Is there a new issue affecting other communities that your community needs to be prepared for with proper regulation?

Star Communities

These are communities that deserve recognition for what they have accomplished. Much like receiving a gold star from your teacher as a kid.

Thinking Outside the Box

Existing initiatives which may be working elsewhere, but may not have received enough press to trickle down to some parts of the Midwest. Or bold new ideas that just might work.

Tool Kit

The Tool Kit post category provides information on grants and other sources of assistance to help make community projects a reality. Often sample projects are provided to provide an example of how these tools can help your own community.

Tough Issues

Every community goes through tough times. Whether it happens to be tornadoes, floods, or a major employer leaving town. The key is to learn from their heartaches and their perseverance to embolden your own community when problems strike.

Tourism

The Tourism post category provides ideas to nurture the tourism sector of your community’s economic development activities.

The post Check out the Post Categories appeared first on Rural Resurrection.

For years, selling investments in trail projects has been based on aspects hard to quantify. Aspects such as quality of life and residents’ health have been the basis for trail improvement projects. Without concrete numbers, trail projects have often suffered when compared to other potential projects. That’s partially because the tools available, like manual counts and sporadic surveys, never really captured the full picture.

Mathew Palmer and Steve Bert at North Carolina State University are changing that by replacing incomplete snapshots with continuous, behavior-based data. Through pairing aggregated cellphone mobility insights from Placer.ai with business data from Data Axle, the work to prove a trail’s benefit moves beyond estimates to observed patterns. Across more than 100 trail corridors and thousands of records, they can now see, with precision, how people use trails and where they will go next.

Trails and Main Street Are Not Separate Systems

One of the team’s more important findings is also one of the most straightforward, yet hardest to prove. Trail use and nearby economic activity are closely linked. They’ve concluded that there’s a strong statistical correlation (R² = 0.72) between trail use and visits to surrounding businesses. This matters as it reframes trails from simple recreational assets into integrated economic infrastructure. People aren’t just walking or biking and heading back home, they are often making stops along the way. They’re stopping at coffee shops, breweries, restaurants, and local retailers along the way.

For small towns, this confirms that trails shouldn’t be considered lightly as a mere recreational amenity, but as an economic driver that can contribute to a community’s economic impact. That said, you can’t just build a trail and expect your local sales tax to grow or overall economic activity to skyrocket. But they can become an increasingly important piece in your community’s economic picture. Each piece is related to the others, creating a cohesive image of economic sustainability.

From Simple Data to Defensible Economic Impact

Utilizing IMPLAN, the team has built a framework that captures direct, indirect, and induced economic impacts within a defined project area. Combined with GIS mapping, communities can visually connect specific trail segments to obtain measurable economic outcomes. So, through a user-friendly graphical interface, users can turn the abstract benefits of new trails into something tangible and place-based.

Accompanying the model will be an Economic Impact Analysis Workbook to help local representatives and grant writers build credible, data-backed narratives around projects. The results of this analysis can help move projects forward with demonstrable outcomes.

The Impact on Grant Applications

Beyond the economic impact, their research also includes a Cost-Benefit Analysis module specifically designed for trail projects. The tool goes a step further by incorporating health outcomes and broader community benefits alongside the boosted economic activity. This is exactly the kind of information that can take your grant application up a notch.

It means that small communities in North Carolina can submit trail-related grant applications that meet state and federal grant reviewers’ expectations by using accessible, easy-to-use tools. They’ll have a fighting chance against larger projects submitted by communities that can hire the analysis to be conducted.

Supporting materials, including workflows, user guidance, and even video tutorials, are being developed to make sure this tool can be effectively used by everyone in North Carolina.

What Midwestern Communities Can Do

Unfortunately, there’s one drawback to this groundbreaking work for Midwestern communities. The model has only been developed for towns in North Carolina. For something to be created for use in your own state, it may be viable to reach out to a university or university extension office to gauge interest in doing something similar. They can then reach out to the researchers at NC State in hopes of developing better models for both states.

However, that would be a long-term goal as the setup of such a tool is quite time-intensive. Alternatively, you don’t necessarily need to replicate their model to make an impact. But you should start thinking differently about how you talk about your trail projects. Start leading with the connection between trails and economic development:

• How does your trail link to existing businesses?
• Where are people likely to stop and spend?
• What does your trail corridor already do that just hasn’t been measured yet?

Being able to answer these and other related questions is important. It can help sell your trail projects to Council members, residents, and grant reviewers. Showing that your trail project will have an economic impact, in addition to the recreational impact, can change minds quickly.

The post NC State Economic Data for Trail Grant Applications appeared first on Rural Resurrection.

Happy Independence Day to everyone!

The post Happy Independence Day!!! appeared first on Rural Resurrection.

At the center of their efforts are residents with a never-ending desire to make the community better. These individuals are infused with a desire to help their community. A sense of volunteerism that every community needs to improve. They also understand the need for placemaking to create gathering spaces that improve the town’s overall sense of community. Their latest project creates the setting for community gatherings on a regular basis with a focus on movies.

The Idea

The residents of Villisca have been keenly aware that they were missing the types of community events that bring the whole family together. Noting a somewhat similar idea in Parsons, Kansas, they came up with the idea of painting the sidewall of a downtown building to act as a movie screen for community movies. However, project leaders in this southwestern Iowa town decided to expand on it and format it to best fit their own community.

The resulting movie screen will be a prominent piece in the community’s downtown for years to come. Residents will be invited to set up their lawn chairs to face the side of 409 S 3rd Avenue to take in a movie open to the public.

The downtown businesses have latched onto the idea as well. Moviegoers will be able to pick up a bag of popcorn from Stoner Drug Store to munch on during the movie. Or they’ll grab a John Wayne burger at the Rialto Cafe before the movie starts. Named after the former movie theater in town, the Rialto has started giving some of its dishes movie-related names.

Multiple Funding Sources at the Box Office

Being a community of roughly 1,000 residents, stakeholders have had to get creative with project funding. First and foremost, they were able to land a Paint Iowa Beautiful grant from Keep Iowa Beautiful and Diamond Vogel Paints of Orange City, Iowa. It was Villisca’s second Paint Iowa Beautiful grant as they had already received funding for another to paint a mural on the side of another building just over a block away from the planned movie facade.

The grant awarded provides 10 gallons of paint for the project. It doesn’t cover the full cost of painting the side of the building. But considering the cost of 10 gallons of paint, it is well worth filling out the application, according to Alex Burton of the Villisca Community Betterment Association. “That’s a huge portion of the cost for us, especially as we are choosing to use local artists,” he states.

Though the grant doesn’t require matching funds, the Villisca Community Betterment Association helped provide the gap funding for the painting of the building. Project leaders were also able to secure funding from the Montgomery County Community Foundation to pay for the sizeable projector needed to cast movies onto the wall during the summer evening hours when the sun hasn’t set just yet.

Showing Soon in a Theater Near You

Alex and the others involved in the project have started on the project with a goal to be completed with the project well ahead of the July 4th holiday. Although July 4th is the 250th birthday of the United States, it is also when the town celebrates its annual Villisca Heritage Days.

The post Villisca is Gets the (Motion) Picture on Placemaking appeared first on Rural Resurrection.

In many rural communities, there are spaces that should be thriving. A downtown square with historic buildings, a park with good bones. In general, they may be good-looking and well cared for. But they still lack in activity and general interest. Residents and visitors may stop briefly, but they won’t linger. They won’t stick around, and without people sticking around, others are less likely to stop. The snowball of activity melts before it gets rolling.

The Power of 10+ rule reframes this problem; it is not so much the space itself, but the layers of everyday use.

What is the Power of 10+?

In placemaking, the Power of 10+ is one of those ideas that sounds simple, at least until you try to apply it. A concept made popular by the Project for Public Spaces, the concept is relatively straightforward.

Great places offer multiple reasons to be there.

A successful public space should have at least 10 reasons to be there. A great district should have ten strong places. A thriving community should have ten districts that matter. Is there a definitive list? No, but here are some examples based on what is suggested by the Project for Public Spaces:

• Places to sit
• Playgrounds for fun
• Shade from the sun
• Art in various forms
• Music to listen to
• Places to eat
• Historical and/or cultural aspects
• Spaces to meet people
• Place-related activities (kayak launches, fishing piers, etc)

But it’s not about hitting a specific number, it’s about shifting how we think about our spaces. Instead of asking, “What project do we need to complete?” The change of thinking that the Power of 10+ concept asks, “Why would anyone stay here?”

From One Thing to Many

Implementing the Power of 10+ starts small. It may be as simple as adding seating to a park. Then maybe a food truck shows up once a week, or someone organizes a small event. Nearby, a business adjusts its hours to match the new activity. None of these changes is impactful on its own, but together they begin to stack up.

Now there’s a reason to stop, to stay a little longer. There’s now more of a reason to come back next week. That’s how the Power of 10+ works, a gradual buildup of aspects that help define a place. There’s no specific checklist that works, just a gradual layering of fixtures, art, activity, and more that help turn a space into a desirable place.

Start With One Place

The Power of 10+ can be scaled to help an entire community, but it is best to start small. Pick a space and ask yourself a simple question: “How many real reasons are there to be here right now?” Not what’s planned or hoped for, but what actually exists and draws people in today.

If the answer to this question is two or three, that’s not a failure, but a starting point to make your places better. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” You don’t need to solve everything at once. You just need to add the next reason to stay, and then another. That’s how momentum around a space builds. It’s how placemaking can start becoming more impactful.

Why It Matters for Rural Communities

For rural communities, this approach is especially important where funds are tight and visibility of government activities is high. A town that invests in a placemaking project, only to see it underutilized, will be scrutinized. For an infrastructure project that can last decades, the criticism can last just as long.

The concept allows communities to start with what they have and make it incrementally better. It also lowers the risk on larger projects and builds confidence in your government’s actions.

Just as importantly, the refinement of space using the Power of 10+, keeps the focus on the use, not just the appearance of the space. A space doesn’t succeed because it looks good. It succeeds because people choose to spend time there.

The post Power of 10 in Placemaking appeared first on Rural Resurrection.

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What Is the Public Art Archive?

A new web platform has been developed to help residents and visitors find these unique expressions within your community. The Public Art Archive is a free, open-access online resource dedicated to documenting public art locations. Since its launch, the archive has made public art more discoverable, more researched, and more appreciated by everyone.

Think of it as a dynamic, ever-growing atlas of artistic expression in public spaces.

What You Can Find in the Archive

The Public Art Archive is a great resource to get your public art projects the attention they deserve. PAA is the largest database that is dedicated to cataloging public art with over 30,000 artworks documented worldwide. But what types of art can you find in the archive? Here are a few examples:

• Sculptures, murals, mosaics, monuments, memorials, digital works, and temporary installations
• Artist biographies and project histories
• Location maps and photography
• Collection-level information from participating public art programs
• Thematic collections and curated highlights

With new art being added to the archive on a regular basis, this resource is only going to grow in popularity. But art doesn’t get added by itself. It is important for your community to show a concerted effort to add art to the database.

Why the Public Art Archive Matters

Communities can use the Public Art Archive to keep an inventory of their public artworks. But the Archive is also a good platform to share the art within the community with residents, tourists, and online visitors. It is a free archive, which is perfect for smaller communities with limited budgets. With a little effort, small towns can share their public art collection, enhancing local education and helping to cultivate a sense of community.

As a web-based platform, the Archive effectively places your town “on the map,” a map that connects people globally. Disregard any potential fame from your community’s public art collection; the Archive has the ability to put your town on the map.

Final Thoughts

Public art enriches our daily lives and is an integral part of successful placemaking. It can also shape your town’s identity, telling a story about who you are as a community. Archiving your community’s projects in the Public Art Archive expands the reach of that story.

If you haven’t explored the archive yet, it is worth a visit. Check it out and think about how it can help the public art in your community shine.

The post Get Your Town on the Map with Public Art Archive appeared first on Rural Resurrection.

Much like nearly any other project, you want to complete for your community, placemaking can become costly. Once your community has conceived a vision for what they want, the dollar figures are applied. That’s when the heart attack sets in. Your heart skips a beat when you see the cost estimates for the placemaking projects your community has worked so hard to conceive.

But there is help out there for those whose budgets aren’t able to pay the full tab of a placemaking project. Although there are a number of funding sources available, especially locally and regionally, here are six notable grants and programs for placemaking available at a national level.

Our Town Grants – National Endowment for the Arts

Art is a key factor in developing a sense of place. It makes spaces memorable, comfortable, interesting, and lively. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) provides grants that promote the use of arts and culture in creative placemaking. One of those is the Our Town Grant program.

The Our Town grant program offers matching grants of $25,000 to $200,000 for arts and culture partnerships between government agencies and nonprofits with the goal of creatively infusing art into places.

Game Tables, Placemaking in Gene Leahy Mall – Omaha, NE

Community Challenge Grant – AARP

AARP has been awarding Community Challenge grants since 2017 with over $12.7 million awarded through over 1,060 grants. Each year they award at least $1 million in total grant funds to innovative projects. Some examples of these projects include innovative approaches to increasing civic engagement, public space activations, increasing transit use and active transportation, housing affordability, smart cities, and other innovative projects to

Placemaking Grant – National Association of Realtors

Each year the National Association of Realtors awards grant funds for placemaking projects throughout the nation. Awards come in two tiers. The first level is for smaller demonstration-scale projects and public space experiments. The Level 2 projects help to fund larger, more impactful community destinations.

Patronicity “Crowdgranting” Programs

Patronicity tends to think a little outside of the norm when thinking about helping communities. But maybe what they are doing should become the norm. They are combining crowdfunding with grants to make projects work. Through their platform, you can leverage community support to make placemaking projects a reality.

Patronicity coaches your project leaders through the crowdfunding campaign and then matches the funds with the support of a philanthropic organization to fund projects. “Crowdgranting” is different from the norm of writing grants to fund your placemaking project, but it’s a proven project that works.

Placemaking, Town Square Amphitheater –
West Union, Iowa

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There are other grants and programs for placemaking. But these are the key national ones that can have an impact on your community.

The post 6 Grants for Placemaking appeared first on Rural Resurrection.

Even if you can’t make it to Detroit this year, it’s still a good week to work on placemaking in your community. It’s a good time to take a look at your community’s gathering spaces through another lens. What adjustments to these areas can make them more welcoming, more interesting to those who visit?

Read Up on the Subject

Rural Resurrection has provided a few posts over the years on placemaking as it is an important aspect that can affect tourism, resident/business attraction, and overall resident happiness and retention. Some of these posts are:

• What is Placemaking?
• Nebraska’s Creative Districts
• The Pop-Up Placemaking Tool Kit
• Regent knows Art is Key in Placemaking

Additionally, here are a few more articles on placemaking on other sites:

Halifax – A Waterfront That Does It Well – by the Social Life Project

Public Art and Creative Placemaking Plan – An ArcGIS Storymaps plan document for the City of Wisconsin Rapids

Some Good Placemaking I’ve Seen in the Past Year

Over the past year, I have had the chance to witness placemaking in various forms. All of which has helped create a sense of place for the communities where they’re placed. Here are a few examples:

The post International Placemaking Week 2026 appeared first on Rural Resurrection.

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