“The Good Ol’ Days Are Back”: Rural Community Case Study of Potosi, Wisconsin

After laying vacant and abandoned for 36 years, the historical hometown brewery of Potosi, Wisconsin opened its doors again. The story leading up to its return and of its impact on the community and surrounding region is a perfect case study of how the CED-SS model can apply to rural communities across the country.

Livin’ in the Heartland: Policy Challenges Facing Rural Communities

Since we’ve explored how the CED-SS model can be applied to urban communities and the policy challenges that face them in the past few posts, it’s time to take on the bigger task of applying the model to rural communities across the country.

But what even qualifies as a rural community? There’s not a universally accepted definition, or even a somewhat cohesive conversation like for urban areas, which makes it more difficult to understand the policy landscape of these communities.

Community-Centered Urban Redevelopment: Case Study of Carlisle, PA

Carlisle, a Central Pennsylvania borough positioned twenty-five miles west of Harrisburg, has a deep and rich history through the American Revolution and Civil War until today. Especially during the Industrial Revolution and the latter part of the 20th century, many factories provided a majority of the jobs in the town and were the economic foundation for the community.

However, as seen in countless other communities across the country, these factories fell away and left the town in quick succession due to widespread deindustrialization and globalization: the International Automotive Components factory closed in 2008, the Tyco Electronics factory in 2009, and the Carlisle Tire & Wheel factory in 2010.

The Borough of Carlisle was faced with an enormous challenge yet an enormous opportunity in how to develop the three brownfield sites on the northern side of town. In 2013, after a long and deliberative process, the Carlisle Urban Redevelopment Plan was published, and is an interesting case study to highlight how the CED-SS model can and has been applied in urban communities.

It’s Hard to be a Saint in the City: Urban Challenges to the CED-SS Model

Define community economic development, opportunity, and social sustainability: check.

Connect these in a model to influence local policymaking: check.

Use a case study to validate the model as a policy evaluation tool as well: check.

So, what’s next?

We can take the framework and understanding that we’ve built thus far and apply it to both urban and rural communities’ policy landscapes to improve their social sustainability. We’ll start with urban policymaking first, but before we can start suggesting policy directions, we first need to understand the challenges and opportunities already in urban neighborhoods and communities.

19 East Chocolate: A Case Study for the CED-SS Model

The community economic development-social sustainability (CED-SS) model that we’ve built over the past eight posts is primarily aimed at being a framework to look at creating new policies in a community. It can also be used, however, to evaluate past policies to extract lessons for future policymaking so that it can fully maximize opportunity and foster strong social sustainability.

Let’s take a look at a case study where there was a breakdown in the model and an impending erosion of social sustainability in the community to highlight some of these lessons: the demolition of the Hershey chocolate factory in 2012.

Rounding out the Cycle: Completing the CED-SS Model

In my last post, I built the first portion of the community economic development-opportunity-social sustainability model and explaining the relationship between the first two. Now, it’s time to take it one step further and see how the model rounds out and comes full circle.

Opportunity is at the center of the model, and we saw it is supported and enhanced through community economic development. How do opportunity and social sustainability relate, though?

The Connection Between Community Economic Development and Opportunity

Buckle up, ladies and gents; we’re moving on.

The last several posts have focused on defining the three concepts that we’re playing with and trying to connect: social sustainability, opportunity, and community economic development.

Now that we have those well-defined, we can move on to the meat of the project: exploring the connection between the three.

From Government to Governance: Orienting Local Policies through Community Economic Development

Community economic development calls for a recalibration of the local democratic processes where social sustainability policies are created and implemented, a change from the classical governmental-focused frameworks of old to a new, progressive approach.

“A traditional government approach is top-down, hierarchical, and operates in isolation from other stakeholders, while new governance, in contrast, cultivates horizontal, flexible relationships for policymaking.”

Relationships. Relationships are the tracks on which the train of community economic development runs. Relationships between citizens and their local authorities, their neighbors, and the environment around them are at the core of mobilizing social sustainability.

Community Economic Development: Reawakening Democracy

What’s so important about the community, anyway? Aren’t the national and international stages more important?

In terms of building and growing social sustainability, the more macro-scale policy arenas have their place in laying down broad strokes, but the real heavy lifting comes on the community level. A national or international policy that attempts to fulfill social sustainability as we’ve come to frame it will not be effective in all communities because, inherently, each community is unique in its composition and its reaction to such a policy. However, if that same policy is tailored on the community level for their unique circumstances, the effectiveness of that policy will logically be higher.

This is where community economic development enters into the social sustainability picture, as it’s the mobilizing strategies and framework that lie behind effective social sustainability.

Community Capital: A Lens for Social Sustainability

The past few posts have focused primarily on opportunity and what exactly I mean by that. Yet, you may be wondering how that is relevant to what this blog is supposed to be about: social sustainability and community economic development.

That’s a fair point, I’ll give you that. But give me a chance to connect the dots. I swear it won’t be for naught.