I might come back to this thread as I work through this /11

Last (for now) I'm dusting off a paper from 2011 about demographic change and community leadership in early ARC asset-based development investment in Virginia journals.openedition.org/rga/1339 to see if this frames up appropriate questions for a paper looking at where we are today.

I'm also playing around with some op-eds about what it might look like to focus economic development in Virginia more clearly on people----incentivizing positive demographic change and directly supporting capacity building in ways that might catch practice up with what's on the horizon. /9

In a couple of weeks I'm starting a graduate studio course on "Future-proofing the outdoor economy" (a focus of many ARC investments over the years). We hope to take lessons from Hurricane Helene and other disasters and develop remediation and diversification strategies /8

And what about the more recent programs? Did these places (growing or not) have the capacity to participate and win? Were the older investments sustained and built on? Or were new leaders cultivated through the olders efforts that carried through to new ones?/7

So what's different now? Did the earlier ARC investments contribute to the growth some areas are experiencing now? And did they contribute in ways that were anticipated at the time or do something different? /6

So here we are in 2024 on the back side of another major economic crisis and we're discussing growth in some (not all) rural counties) and decline in some (not all) urban centers in Virginia and we've seen massive federal investment in less prosperous areas (urban and rural) /5

At that time, rural decline was pretty established narratives. New business recruitment was still the primary vision for rural areas. I recall a 2004 ARC event where then Governor Warner talked about these projects as an important complement to attracting business investment to the region. /4

Following the 2010 economic crisis, I took a look at asset-based development investments by the Appalachian Regional Commission in Virginia that began in 2005. One key observation was the outside role the recent arrivals in these communities played in leading these initiatives. /3

There are important policy bookends and shifting demographic realities that raise big questions about where we are not just in rural Virginia, but other areas that have struggled to find a path to prosperity over the last quarter century /2