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Prairie Cafe 2002
2007-11-04
Prairie Café 2002
Quality of Place – What is Essential for Vibrant Community Life in the 21st Century?
During the 2001 Prairie Café discussions the question of what should be the primary objective of rural development efforts in the 21st century was either directly raised or implied within related questions. The same question continues to be raised in discussions among individuals and organizations concerned about the future of the Northern Great Plains.
One direction this discussion is heading is to ask if it is time to shift the focus of rural development initiatives – especially given the economic and demographic changes of the past decade in our Region’s economy. For almost 20 years rural (and economic) development has focused on job creation – getting jobs into rural communities almost virtually regardless of type, wage level, amount of local wealth creation, or community impact. Certainly this goal has met with much success and has brought jobs and businesses to rural communities. Yet, there continues to be rural population decline, services and infrastructure decline, lower income levels and hidden poverty, decreasing numbers of farms and main street businesses, and other economic and social challenges.
Now people are asking if the focus of rural development should shift from job creation to building ‘quality of place.’ In other words, creating jobs is not proving sufficient enough to bring economic and social vitality to rural areas. In fact, there might now be a greater need and challenge for rural areas – building/rebuilding/maintaining rural quality of place. This might sound like what has traditionally been considered community development, but many think there is more here. While the issues may seem a little fuzzier, the questions about quality of place consider a broader set of factors than those of traditional community development such as housing, business development, infrastructure, training, etc. Quality of place discussions include such things as hope, environmental quality, life-long learning systems, community and personal identity and worth, and more.
In thinking about the Northern Great Plains (NGP), three important questions come to mind:
• What are the essential services or elements of community life necessary for rural areas or communities to have quality of place?
• What polices or practices need to be and can be changed to ensure these essential elements are in place?
• Will changes in specific policies or practices require changes in beliefs, values, or practices? If so, how are long held beliefs or practices changed? And what programmatic activities could organizations and individuals involved in rural development undertake to help make the needed changes so that the Northern Great Plains region and/or rural communities achieve quality of place?
Essential Elements for Quality of Place
The first question that Prairie Café is raising is, “What are the minimum essential elements of quality of place that allow people to make choices about where they might live?” The question assumes that, without certain minimum levels of services, people cannot or will not choose to live in such a place regardless of lifestyle. The discussion is not about desirable amenities for quality of place. It is about essential services for quality of place.
Here is a suggested listing of key elements necessary to have quality of place in the Northern Great Plains region. The list is a beginning for discussion and is open to additions or changes.
Communications: Access to a minimum global standard for communications could be considered essential to quality of place. Many prairie residents remember when the telephone first came to their farms or ranches. Prior to its arrival the telephone may have been considered non essential. Very rapidly it became an elemental part of our connection to the world. Are there communications technologies that exist today or are on the horizon that must be available to people in rural areas in order to meet a minimum standard of 21st century communications access? Does this include access to broadband service or wireless service? Does this include having a minimum knowledge/skill level in these technologies and an ability to receive training in the use of them?
Hope: Having hope for the future is essential to having quality of place for people living in rural areas, or anywhere. This hope can be manifested in something as simple as knowing there is opportunity to pursue a dream or idea because there are places to turn to for help such as federal, state or private programs. It can also be manifested in the more complex matter of being able to simply visualize a future in the place where a person lives. Without hope, young people in particular will leave to go to a place where there is hope. What are the sources of hope? Is hope something that can be created or given?
Transportation: The ability to get to places reasonably efficiently and timely and the ability to ship and receive goods in a time sensitive economy are essential to quality of place – especially as it impacts commerce and a rural community’s need to have business activity. Defining or redefining what the minimum levels of service or infrastructure are may be necessary. And using new technologies may allow rural areas to meet these needs and definitions of infrastructure and service quality. What investments are needed to ensure infrastructure quality in rural areas? Is it possible to use IVHS technology to address infrastructure quality concerns? What other ways can technology help meet rural transportation infrastructure needs?
Education: Education has generally been viewed as first a required K-12 process and second, for those that choose additional learning to obtain a post-secondary degree or professional certificate. However, in today’s world, education may need to be viewed as a life-long process. Education, especially at the K-12 levels, has also been generally viewed as an interaction between a student and a licensed/certified teacher who is physically present. It may be time to reconsider this perspective. For example, could local professionals provide structured education in smaller school districts in cooperation with certified teachers? Could certified teachers in one NGP state be allowed to teach via distance education in a neighboring NGP state?
Health Care: Everyone needs access to health care. At differing times access to preventative services, acute care, critical care or emergency care may be needed. These needs will also vary by age, circumstance, and frequency. How each of these needs can be met in rural areas should be analyzed in the context of recent technology developments. Does telemedicine offer real promise to improve rural access to medical services? What telecommunications infrastructure needs to be in place to make telemedicine workable? Will there need to be a change in state physician licensing policies? Will there need to be changes in how insurance or payers treat telemedicine services?
Shopping: Access to a grocery store is often taken for granted. Yet some rural communities are finding themselves not only without a gas station or grocery store, but many miles away from one. As is the case with access to transportation services or medical care, is there a maximum travel distance to gain access to certain shopping needs in order to have quality of place? And what are the minimum shopping needs, for example buying milk or bread, which would fall within such a framework?
Capital: Access to capital is a key part of any effort to start new businesses, expand existing ones, purchase homes, research an idea or take other action in the marketplace. Without access to capital, entrepreneurs, businesses or families living in rural areas will not be able to conduct these activities. There is a growing reluctance on the part of lenders and investors to put capital into rural areas given their perspective of a questionable economic future for rural businesses or questionable real estate markets. What is currently happening in the capital markets in rural areas? Is there sufficient capital, but not enough good projects? Or is this an excuse to avoid lending in rural areas?
Environment: In the past, the prairie has been viewed as a harsh and challenging place to live and work. Life on the plains has been described as a “man against nature struggle.” Yet for many that live on the prairie it is a beautiful, graceful and peaceful place. How can the image of the plains be transformed to one of a quality place to live? Is it possible to develop an approach to economic and community life on the plains as complementary vs. adversarial?
Identity of place: Each person wants be from somewhere. And, we want to have a positive image of where we are from. We want our ‘identity of place’ to be positive, to communicate good things about us, and to be recognizable. The Buffalo Commons identity is not a positive one. Being an agricultural region is perhaps becoming a negative image. What kind of identity does the Region want to have? Can the Northern Great Plains region work to create and firmly establish a positive image about itself that brings self-esteem to its existing residents and sends a message to potential residents?
Necessary Changes in Policies or Practices
We have asked, "What are the essential elements for quality of place in the 21st century?" Establishing a defined set of essential elements for quality of place sets the stage for developing policies and practices that reflect 21st century realities. These polices would be based on quality of place using available, new technologies and not on quantity of people, trucks, teachers, or buildings using old technologies. Moving from a late 20th century standard to a 21st century system of people-centered and technology-driven services will clearly have policy, practice, or other implications. In fact, it may be necessary to “rewrite the rules."
For example, in the (late) 20th century the minimum ability to communicate was the telephone. In the 21st century, it is access to high-speed Internet service. As a matter of public policy should the USA make a commitment to ensuring that all people have access to broadband service? This was done with the telephone through the Rural Electrification Administration. Why not for broadband? It is not a matter of saying some areas are too sparsely populated and we can't spend the money. It is a public policy commitment to quality of place/life for all people.
In the (late) 20th century, the minimum access to medical care was generally thought to be a clinic, hospital or other medical facility. In the 21st century, access to medical care could include services provided by telemedicine or availability of rapid ambulance service such as a helicopter. Insurance companies will not always pay for these expenses. Should we rewrite the rules to require insurance companies to pay for costs that would be generally standard procedures if they were in a hospital, such as doing diagnostics over distance?
In the (late) 20th century the minimum access to education was a building with licensed teachers. In the 21st century it could be a combination of distance education by licensed teachers and local professionals. New policies on use of distance education, multi-state teacher certification, or school operations may need to be developed in order to provide even a minimal level of education/class options to rural schools. Could the Northern Great Plains states agree to allow teachers licensed in one state to teach in another via distance education? Is it time to change state teacher or other professional licensing rules?
Or, in the case of rural bridges, many cannot meet the current standard of quality. One standard of a functional bridge is the ability to support two fully loaded semi-trucks meeting simultaneously in the middle. If it cannot, it is substandard. Thus, under current policy, the choices are virtually hopeless: close the substandard bridge, thus cutting off trade and commerce, or ask that significant expenditures of scarce highway funds be made to handle relatively light traffic. Yet, with relatively inexpensive IVHS and GPS technologies we could ensure that only one truck would cross the bridge at a time. Modern technology would allow the Region to establish new minimum standards for bridge quality. However, this would require a change in policy or rule. Changing the rules could help solve a potential access to transportation/logistics services problem for rural businesses and communities.
Change – the Uninvited Guest
A primary challenge the Region faces in addressing existing 20th century policies and practices is directly linked to how we learn and change as humans, as organizations and as governments. History is full of examples that show that our willingness to adapt new knowledge into the practices and behaviors of an organization is significantly slower than our willingness to accept new knowledge. Or, said another way, we can readily adopt or accept a new idea or new knowledge and support it much faster than we can change or adapt our behaviors within our organizations, business, communities or personal lives to reflect the new knowledge we have gained. It is this adapting to change in the form of new practices or policies and the hard work that comes with moving from idea to practice when doing so requires us to change our behavior, values or beliefs that challenges us the most.
Perhaps a clearer example of human and organizational response to change can be seen in how the Region has responded to the information technology revolution. Similar to how we respond to new knowledge, our ability to bring new technologies functionally into our daily lives or businesses or organizational operations is slower than our ability to recognize the potential of new technologies. We have in fact, been reasonably quick to adopt information technologies but quite slow in adapting our lives to the effective use of them. This is especially true in rural communities. Many communities have high-speed access, IT classes in their school systems, and fairly high penetration of Internet access into the home. Yet few communities and the businesses within them have really adapted or changed their business practices, their community functions, or their daily lives to make the most effective and beneficial use of these information technologies. Indeed, many communities have completed an IT strategic planning process, worked to get high speed access into their community, and then thought the work was done. Few communities have taken the important next step of really changing how business, education, government or other elements of community life function. In the 21st century, where speed of communications can determine whether a business is successful or not, adapting business practices to this new reality becomes essential.
There are probably many policy changes that can be implemented easily and readily. There are immediate issues that can be addressed through specific “technical” solutions. However, there are differences between technical strategies/solutions and adaptive strategies/action. Technical solutions to problems are just that, a technical fix - a shot or pill from the doctor to remove the symptoms, a regional conference to increase knowledge, a new law or policy that requires specific behavior, a new agency management or organizational structure, delivery of new information technology training programs to increase usage, or providing a website for every business to increase commerce. These are fixes to problems that may make the problem either go away or appear to go away.
Certainly, sometimes all that is needed will be a technical solution. Often a shot or pill will cure what ails us. But sometimes, the situation requires more – it requires real change. It requires us to undertake the difficult work of adapting to new circumstances – changing what we do, how we live, how we work. This is certainly not easy. Adaptive work necessitates changes in values, beliefs or behaviors. We need to give up something to gain something. In our organizations and communities we will need to give up doing things the way we always have (a loss) and begin doing things in a new way (a gain). Unfortunately, as empirical research has shown, when faced with change, we focus more on the loss than the gain. And in focusing on the loss, we become reluctant to change. In other words, we risk losing our ability to create the future.
Are all the vested interests ready to experience change? Are economic developers willing to shift their focus from job creation to building quality of place? Are teachers, legislators, transportation officials, insurance companies, or doctors willing to change long-standing polices or practices in order to better serve rural areas? Is our national government willing to implement public policies that will insure that those who choose to live on the plains can have the essential services necessary to have quality of place? Are any of us ready to take the needed steps to build a healthy economic and environmental future for the Northern Great Plains and the people that choose to live here?
Defining essential elements of quality of place and identifying policies and practices that should be changed are two critical steps towards rebuilding a vital Northern Great Plains region. In some ways, this work could be considered the ‘inspiration’ part of what needs to be done. It is however, the hard work of causing real change – change in behavior, habits, beliefs – that is the ‘perspiration’ part of what needs to be done.
Is the NGP region ready for the hard work of change? Do we recognize the need to do so? Do we have the leaders to help us do the hard work of change? If not, can we find or develop the leaders we need?
Prairie Café 2002 will challenge us to explore what a 21st century NGP region can look like. It will give us an opportunity to discuss ways we might get there. And, finally, we will be able to ask ourselves, are we ready to do the heard work of changing ourselves and making change happen in the Region.
