Often schools close out of a belief that taking this step will save money and help students. Whether or not those benefits materialize, there are downsides for the locals.
A sociologist spent over a year interviewing black, white and Latino residents of a declining coal town in central Pennsylvania, plumbing the sources of their political disillusionment.
Sherry Hamby, Sewanee: The University of the South
People in Appalachia are skeptical and cautious around technology – and how they think can be useful and instructive for living in a tech-centric world.
Many people in rural America don’t have access to fast, affordable internet access. How might those communities connect to the global exchange of goods, services and ideas?
The US wants to invest in more infrastructure to handle our rainfall and melted snow. Stormwater credits could help cut costs and protect the environment.
Federal rules governing television stations were meant to keep them connected to the communities they serve. The Trump administration wants to weaken those rules, and those civic links.
The Trump administration’s proposed budget suggests it will continue to spend federal dollars on expanding broadband internet access. But the rules governing internet traffic matter too.
Pittsburgh’s post-industrial economic resurgence is promising, a historian of the region writes, but there’s a reason President Trump highlighted the area in his speech exiting the Paris climate deal.
A recent study from the Tisch College of Civil Life at Tufts looks at millennials’ civic engagement – and finds some cause for concern in rural, suburban and urban areas.
More and more people are talking about the ‘rural-urban divide,’ but what does that phrase actually mean? We asked experts from around the country to illustrate the gap in graphs and maps.
The number of prisons in the US swelled between 1970 and 2000, from 511 to nearly 1,663. Here’s the story of why one town in Arkansas welcomed a correction facility.
Giving rural residents the option of using broadband access isn’t enough to boost their community involvement. To really improve civic engagement, rural dwellers need to use the internet.
Nine out of 10 rural places experienced increases in diversity from 1990 to 2010. Data show a more diverse future is guaranteed across all of America, and there’s no going back.
‘Rural America’ is a deceptively simple term for a remarkably diverse collection of places. Understanding – and improving – these parts of the country is critical for all Americans.